Mine mine mine, all mine

animal, vegetable or mineral

I haven't felt a lot like posting lately - I think I suffer from a mild form of seasonal affective disorder or something. When I leave work and it's dark and I come home and it's dark, it does something to me. Something not good. All I really want to do is curl up in bed with a cup of coffee and a book and take catnaps and not have anybody bother me.

But, since I'm married with a three-year-old child and a cat and a greyhound, somebody is always bothering me for something. I think I'll just have to self-medicate with chocolate and move on.

First, let me talk with you about the Halloween costume drama. Yes, I do realize that it's October 25th and no, we do not yet have a Halloween costume for Drew.

I started about a month ago asking him, now that he's old enough to have opinions (and many of them) about various topics that directly affect him, what he wanted to dress up as for Halloween. I apparently opened some sort of floodgate, and have now learned that we do not ask open-ended questions of dictatorial and intransigent three-year-olds. We give them choice A and choice B and we tell them to pick one.

Otherwise, what you end up with is a preschooler who demands a different costume  every day. One day he wants to be a racecar driver. The next day he wants to be an actual racecar, specifically Lightning McQueen, his new best friend. Then he wants to be a spider, a witch, a lion and Bob the Builder.

At the moment that he is having these costume ideas, whatever particular costume has caught his fancy is the ONLY costume that he will wear, and alternative suggestions are not only unwelcome, but greeted with sobs and screams. Furthermore, reminders of what he chose the day previously are met with either hostile resistance or outright denial of ever having chosen that costume in the first place.

"Nooooooo, Mama, I do NOT want to be a 'pider! I want to be BOB the BUILDER! BOB! THE! BUILDER!"

So. Nana and I are taking him shopping together on Saturday. We will be coming home with a costume of some type, and he will be wearing it on October 31 and that's just the end of the story.

Now. Last night in the car on the way home from work, we were discussing various types of animals. I don't remember how we got on the subject and it doesn't matter because that's not really the point. At one point, bats were mentioned, probably in connection with Halloween, and Drew informed me that a bat was not an animal.

"A bat is an animal, " says I.

"A bat is an animal?" queried Drew, just to be sure, I guess.

"Yep."

"An owl is an animal, too?" asked Drew.

"Yes, an owl is a type of animal called a bird."

"Specifically, a noctural bird of prey known as a raptor," chimed in his daddy.

In the silence emanating from the backseat, I whispered, "Maybe a little too much information, hun."

"A booger is an animal," replied Drew, confidently.

"Um..." I started...

"No," interrupted Drew. "No. A booger is a vegetable."

Yes, folks, that's my child. A booger is a vegetable.

Drew turns 3

Yes, Drew is officially 3. He will proudly tell anybody who asks. "I'm tree!" he'll exclaim.

Last Saturday, we had a party at the house. He had, months before, specifically requested a "Mickey Mouse" birthday party, so we got Mickey Mouse balloons and Mickey Mouse cake and Mickey Mouse plates.

For entertainment, because I wasn't about to try to amuse six to eight preschoolers all by my lonesome, we hired a Kindermusik teacher to come out and have a private music/dancing class with the kids. Then we ate pizza, opened presents, ate cake and let the kids run off the sugar high on our backyard playset.

And now, some pictures of the festivities:

Here are the kids in the playroom participating in dancing and singing with Miss Carol from Kindermusik.

Drew with his Mickey cake. If you look closely, you'll notice something...um...unusual about the "candles" on the cake. See, in our frantic preparations for the party that morning (yes, we'd been planning it for a month or so, but do you really think we cleaned our house that far in advance? no, we did what any self-respecting parent does and we woke up early the morning of the party and started shoving stuff in closets)...well...I sort of accidentally threw away the birthday candles. And then Charles sort of took the trash to the dump before the guests arrived.

So, there we were, candle-less. And we had been promising Drew for weeks that he would get to "make a wish" and blow out some candles. So, Charles dug some matches out of a drawer, and voila! Something for Drew to blow out. Shut up. He never noticed the difference. By the time he's old enough to know, we'll have done something much worse and more emotionally scarring and he'll forget all about this.

Here's Drew opening some of his presents. If you're ever bored and feel you need a challenge, dump a big pile of brightly wrapped gifts into a mob of three, four and five-year-olds, and then tell them only one person can open the presents.

Yeah. It was kind of like watching Wild Kingdom.

Here's Drew's present from me and Charles - a train table for all of his Thomas trains. Charles found a great deal on it on Ebay.

After the party, Drew got to have a sleepover with Alex.

First, we tossed them into the bathtub, to wash off all the sand from the sandbox and cake frosting and whatnot. They found the whole experience quite novel. Alex's mom, Kelly, and I think these will be great blackmail pictures later on.

Then we read bedtime stories together. Yes, Alex chose the Dora Potty Book, which, to be fair, is one of Drew's favorite books. Too bad neither of them will actually use a potty, but they sure do like to read about them.

We put Alex to bed in a pack-and-play in Drew's room, where the two of them proceeded to stay up until 10:30 or so laughing and giggling like two teenage girls having a slumber party.

The next morning we had pancakes for breakfast, and before Alex and Kelly left, they helped Charles put together one of Drew's gifts - a desk/easel combination.

Well, OK. Alex helped by handing Charles some plastic hammers, and a plastic saw. Kelly and I sat on the couch and watched cartoons.

As you can see, Drew also watched cartoons, although he looked like he was helping by standing around holding tools. This is the same technique used by the South Carolina Highway Department during road construction projects.

Happy 3rd Birthday Drew!