Happy Birthday, Crispy!

My little boy turned 6 today! I can't believe how fast the years go by. He has always been such a sweet, kind-hearted soul, and 6 years later, he remains as such. We had a great day today doing special things just for him. He picked going to the Children's Museum, where Grandma C met up with us for a short while. It is always such a nice place to go, even on super-crowded days like today. The kids are always so well entertained, and they love running from one thing to another, giving their attention spans a holiday from needing to focus on anything for more than 2 minutes. There is so much to see and do there that we never see it all in one trip. Today we were there for 3 hours and did not even play in their favorite enormous water table! The Sesame Street display was a hit(even though they barely know what it is thanks to Nick Jr), and Crispy & I enjoyed a game of checkers in the park. The kids all love the Ant Hill, where they dressed up in little ant suits and proceeded to run around the hill looking for National Treasures. After a quick cupcake break, they were off to work at the brick mill making sure to catch the bus to work their second shifts as ethnic restaurant cooks, postal workers, and rock band members. I think we could spend all day at the museum without getting bored. What a great place.

On the way home, we picked up party supplies and pizza for Crispy's first real birthday party ever. We arrived home at 4pm, and quickly decorated the cake, picked up the house, filled the treat bags, nursed the baby, and cooked the pizza before his guests began arriving at 5:30. What started out as a small party of 3 turned into a party of 8, as all of his little friends were able to make it, even on such short 2-day notice! The energy in our house was to the roof! I do not remember such noise and hyperness with the older boys' parties when they were this age.....I must has suppressed specific parts into my subconscious. After pizza and cake, Jonny and I braved the task of bringing all of the boys to the pool, swimsuits, towels, floaties, winter jackets, boots, and all.

WARNING: Do NOT try this at home! This should only be attempted by professionals.

It was pure chaos in the locker room as 8 pairs of socks and underwear, towels and boots went flying everywhere. With 4 lockers, we managed to suppress the "stuff" inside. The kids had an absolute blast in the pool, and I was enjoying the reprieve from reprimands as I let the lifeguard take over that duty for a while. Since he does not yet know how to swim, Crispy loved using his floatie (which are usually not allowed in the pool)....it allowed him to experience the water in many new ways. You would think that after 90 minutes of tag, water basketball, and hard play in the water, that a group of 5 and 6 year olds would have properly expended their energy, but I think it only fuelled it somehow.

After 30 more minutes than planned, the kids reluctantly left the pool (some needing much more prodding than others). In the locker room, it was backwards chaos resembling what had gone on when we arrived. We made it with only one lost pair of underwear, one lost pair of socks, and one kid who crawled into a locker and locked himself in it. I sent Jonny upstairs to get the guy at the front desk to rescue him, though I was quite tempted to leave him there for a bit to perhaps learn a lesson from this stunt. With the temperature a balmy -10 degrees, the kids piled into the truck quite speedily and we drove them all home, now 60 minutes later than expected. Judging from how loud they all were in the truck, I think that they had a great time, and it was funny how none of the parents seemed to mind the extra hour away. Crispy said he had a really nice birthday. Everyone should sleep well tonight!