November 3, 2006 - Sunday
Today Jeremy is five. And like last year he's been looking forward to his birthday for more than three weeks, back when it was still more than "twenty sleeps" away. He's used that expression last year, although this year it was a little more refined in a way that hints at the conceptual nature of Jeremy thought process. He's a sweet boy with a colorful imagination that often comes up with these types of phrases and ideas.

Jeremy's also an artistic boy and that was the theme of his party again this year. I don't think it ever occurred to him to have a different theme because art is what he likes. Of course, this year the activities were more elaborate and there were more kids, too. We invited seven, but two couldn't make it. Interestingly, this time the five that came were four little girls and one other little boy, plus Harry and Jeremy. The two that couldn't come were both boys, but I think if the numbers had been larger Jeremy would probably have added more girls than boys. That's partly because there are more girls in his Pre-K class, but it's also because Jeremy just seems to like the girls. When I pick him up from school he's just as likely to be doing something with one of the girls as one of the boys.

What did we do for the art party this year? First the kids colored these (above left) white plastic hats with markers. Then, it was make-your-own pizza. It was Jeremy's choice to have pizza because now he loves the peanut butter pizza. Jordan made a peanut butter pizza, too, but didn't eat very much of it. The girls, many apparently with experience making their own pizzas at their own homes, all made more conventional tomato and cheese-based pizza. While the pizzas were cooking, the kids all went down into the basement to paint T-shirts on a big table with more than dozen little squeeze bottles of fabric paint. One of the mothers made a comment about "going all out" with activities, but it seems to me that compared to the alternative of little kids running around the house randomly, planning a lot of activites is really the easy way to go. And how could the kids not like squeezing paint out onto white shirts? I had bought about $30 worth of paint, although that included several duplicates. The funny part is that when I was at the crafts store I went back and forth struggling to decide how many little bottles and colors to buy and I ended up rationalizing that I would return what didn't get opened. Hah! It didn't take more than about 20 seconds with the kids to see that my (admittedly strained by the presence of two boys in a store) logic was greatly flawed. It would have been like putting out a bowl of candy and telling the kids to not take more than they wanted.

After pizza and cake, and a surprising amount of high-spiritedness and running around the circle of the downstairs from a girl-heavy party, Jeremy opened his presents. And it was bizarrely hectic. I guess we didn't have a big party when Harry turned five, but I've been to a couple other parties for kids that age and don't really remember it being so tenuous. All of the kids wanted Jeremy to open their present (that's no surprise), but all of them also seemed to went to "help." Jeremy kept trying to move to a different spot to get a little air, but the horde kept following him. At one point he even yelled to have everyone stop, but I don't think anyone heard him. Some of the other mothers there also tried to rein in their child, but only with vocal pleas and they didn't seem to help much. We just did the best we could keeping things in check and, in the end, Jeremy got all his presents and seemed happy with the whole party. And it was mostly time for the kids to go home.

In a bizarre little twist to Jeremy's birthday, Jeremy went to the dentist today. He'd been complaining about his tooth hurting for a couple of days in a way that seemed like some food might have gotten caught in his gums. But even after two days of diligent flossing he was still complaining and the dentist had an opening. They did find anything either that would likely have caused the pain, except for the beginning of a cavity on the top of the suspect tooth. Fortunately, they didn't think it was at all bad enough to deal with on the spot, so Jeremy got home early. Of course, that was before we'd had time to put up with streamers and as soon as Jeremy walked in he said, "it doesn't look special." We told him it was still early and that we were working on it, but I think it's an example of how little gets by this little guy. I think in the end it worked out great and Jeremy did feel special after all. But just in case, we saved one more present for bedtime. We never found out what made Jeremy cry after we shut his bedroom door last year at the end of his birthday, but this year we made sure he was happy. Since Jeremy's gotten into horse he's been wanted a stuffed horse of his own (like mommy's Penelope), so I tucked this one under his sheets while mommy was brushing his teeth. It was a perfect end to his special day. He named it "Horace" (although I think that mommy helped a little with the homophone).


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