a happy birthday!

quinn turned four on wednesday!!!

we spent last week with mama mostly home from work, and quinn pretty low key and sniffly and feverish and coughing. on sunday i could see him livening up again, and since it has been cold,  i spontaneously busted out some “big stuff” so he could be active indoors. first, he wanted to go to the farmer’s market (i know, buddy, i’m jonesing too!) so instead, he had his own farmer’s market indoors, and i played customer. over and over again. his prices are pretty fun! sometimes all i needed was a little pirate treasure, or thirteen pennies. other times he decided on some serious markups. he charged me twenty bucks for a pair of his socks. i happily paid. then we went for rides in his cardboard box boat.

since we were doing the farmer’s market gig, we got out his tent, and by monday night, we had it so fully rigged with a deep layer of blankets that we slept in it, after cooking our hotdogs over the woodstove and reading some jungle book and some nim’s island while snacking on graham cracker bunnies. then of course, on birthday eve, we decided it was only fitting to “camp” once again. when i called it birthday eve, he decided we needed the baby yew tree we use for christmas/solstice to come inside “in case that guy wants to come and put any presents under it.” so we brought in that rugged little potted tree. then it needed lights (conveniently, i haven’t taken those down yet…. ahem.) then we tried to wind down, i told him a long snuggly story about when he was born, and he finally went to sleep in the tent and i miraculously remained awake to stand in for “that guy” and put the presents under the tree.

we woke up in the morning and took it easy and he was sleepy nursing waking up and then remembered…. “is it my birthday?” yes sweetie it is. then unzipping the tent to see if there were presents- there were! he started right in opening the first one, which was treats like fruit leather and a lollipop and he was ecstatic already. then he opened his marble track which he was SO thrilled about even just looking at the box and he needed to play it right away so that was good, so i could sneak into the kitchen and make breakfast and coffee. he had his standard breakfast of bagel with goat cheese and jam. he’s been favoring plum jam. my mom sent him FOUR new ones for his birthday.

we played with the marbles stacking up the blocks and rampy things (it’s pretty fun!) for a long time. in between he’d notice something, like i had decorated the first page of his new sketchbook with “happy birthday quinn” in rainbow letters, so he spelled them out and asked the letters he didn’t know, then he went on to the next page and drew the three party hats (mine was green, his was yellow and dada’s would be the red one, he assigned them lol) and he drew a hat in each of the three colors and the letter P beside each one. then he had me spell out party hat and he wrote the letters. he also wanted to check out the banner i had sewed for him out of pooh fabric scraps.

we were pretty wrapped up with hats, drawing, and marbles, and bagels, for the first two hours of the day. then we went and picked up dada, we were going to try to go to the beach for the nice 10am low tide but it was cold and rainy and quinn was very firm that the idea of going to the beach “bummed him out” and he wanted to do it on a nicer day, just bring dada to the orange house today. ok.

so we hung out and it was all fine. quinn opened his new bag-o-driftwood blocks. the bag was the thing he hadn’t seen yet, he has seen his dad working on making the blocks in his shop, and  i made his bag extra super special (with amos and boris, friends from one of his current favorite books, sewed on it, and with a rope around the top.) he was thrilled. we played blocks, and more marbles, and then he opened some stuff his dad brought. a friend had given him some playdough (four of them lol) and so he and dada made a t. rex out of purple playdough while i took a walk to the place up the block to get four balloons….

he saw me walking back with them and i could hear him squealing and running to the other door where i would come in… oh he was SO excited. he LOVES those helium balloons.

they were played with for a long time.

we baked “muffins and cupcakes” and he put candles in each one, then put the extras into the yellow playdough cupcakes he made for his t. rex, andwe sang for t. rex and lit his candles and quinn blew those out. then we did the real ones. somewhere in the middle of all of that, quinn decided he needed to plant a pea.

dada left, quinn put off his nap for several more hours  and just as he started getting sleepy  we called so he could talk to all three of his grandparents. when each and every one of them asked “what kind of presents did you get?”  he responded: “someday you should come over and see them” by the time he got to my dad it was actually “someday you should come over and check ’em out” he didn’t want to list them, he wanted grams, grammy and grampy to come and play. awwww. they all melted into grandparent puddles on the floor.

he finally fell asleep in the tent for a late nap, with kitty and his balloons watching over him.

he was sharing his birthday all day- he asked me for a sharp knife to cut up his fruit rope into three pieces, so he could give one to me and one to dada. he made it t. rex’s birthday. when he got my mom on the phone he told her “happy birthday” right away. he sang to each of us, we got given things and said happy birthday to. he just loves to celebrate but is not at all selfish with the celebration.

my mom asked him about amos and boris (i had told her about the bag) and he thought of the book of course, which he got at christmas. he told her “i got that on one of my other birthdays.” you know, christmas, solstice, all of his other birthdays…. 🙂

we left it up to him if he wanted to go to dada’s in the evening, and if he wanted to spend the night. he wanted to go (dada had a present there for him) but he wanted me to come get him to sleep at the orange house.  i had told him i would be sleeping in the big bed tonight (mama’s body needed a break after two nights camping on the hardwood floor) and he was ok with that in theory (earlier) but then when it was bedtime: “nooooo we’re sleeping in the tent!” i said he was welcome to sleep in the tent, and could come in and get in the big bed with me if he woke up and got nervous or just wanted to. somewhat surprisingly, he wanted to try! so he had the flashlight, and he was just going to roll up in the sleeping bag and go to sleep (not have me give him milk first- more of this happening lately) and he was a whole 45 seconds in there after i went in the bedroom. then i heard him unzip tent, get out, zip it closed, come padding into the bedroom, flashlight in hand. he wanted to try again so i helped him go back and zip himself in again. he waited another minute, zip zip, came in again with flashlight in hand, and said he would just have a little milk in the big bed with me and THEN go back to the tent. okey dokey. zzzzzzzzzzz. hahaha.