We celebrated The Wictor’s birthday last Saturday.

On Sunday morning when he woke up, he was 4 years old! On the way to the store, he led his brother and sister in a game of finding all the number 4s in the world outside. Street signs, house numbers, advertising hoardings… isn’t it amazing how many number 4’s there are in the world? Number 4’s just like The Wictor!

Mommy? He said, Remember yesterday when I was three? And I had my party at the gymnastics club?

We had his party at the gymnastics club. The one where I have just very expensively enrolled all three of my children, despite the fact that one of them is very athletic but is more interested in having fun than in making precise movements with his limbs, one would fall off a couch if you sat her on it (and frequently, she does) and the other … has just turned 4. Oh well, they enjoy it.

The Wictor had specifically requested this venue for its inflatable train, and it was only after I had booked and paid for the thing that he announced he loved the train but was also too scared to go inside it. In the end he did, just the one time, with the wonderful Coach Matt. Then we watched while his friends went around again … and again … and again….

Coach Matt also led the children in bouncing and swinging and jumping their way through the place … and as an added bonus, all the serious gymnasts were away at a meet that day, so the little gymnasts got to go into the Big Gym!

(My photos get very blurry at this point as I was trying to hide some serious hurt, having just broken my little toe on a piece of gym equipment. The Show Must Go On! Unfortunately Coach Matt had made me sign a waiver, so I will get no compensation for Pain and Suffering for that one. And I was such a great actress, smiling heroically through the tears, that I didn’t even get any sympathy. Not even from the Daddy, who when I unwrapped it the next day and showed it to him all purple and swollen said “Oh, I thought you were just being overdramatic”).

This was actually The Wictor’s first ever real birthday party. Last year he didn’t have one partly because I didn’t have time to organize it, but also because his birthday falls two weeks into Summer Vacation. Although Summer Vacation lasts 10 weeks, everybody seems to leave during the first month. In the end six children turned up, which with my three was just enough to make a party. And The Wictor was delighted.

Mommy? He asked me this morning “Am I still four?”

The Wictor: Why are some people brown?

The Mommy: Well, they … um … it depends what color your Mommy and Daddy are. If your Mommy and Daddy you are born from are brown, then you will be brown too.

The Wictor: I’m not brown. I’m tan.

The Mommy: Yes. Because Daddy is tan and Mommy is … sort of tan.

There are all sorts of colors of people. Beautiful brown, beautiful pink, beautiful tan people…

The Wictor: And yellow people!

The Mommy: Well, yes … um … I guess. Yellow people too.

The Wictor: Like the Simpsons!

The Mommy: Oh! Yes, like The Simpsons!

The Wictor: Why they make the Simpsons yellow?

It started sometime around Christmas, I’m not sure exactly.

The Wictor started waking up in the night again. Probably a stage.

At first, I would take him back to bed. And then, one night as he crawled in with me, I was too tired to do anything about it. Doing nothing became easy. I would wake up briefly to him getting under the covers and cuddling up, and that was that.

As it became a habit, I started not even noticing any more. I started sleeping through.

Most mornings now I wake up to find him stretched out, snoring, beside me.

And I have no recollection of how he got there.

But that is not the problem. The problem is this:

This morning I woke up to find there were four of us in the bed.

When Baby Sister woke up, I asked her:

“Baby Sister, how did you end up in my bed last night? ”

Her eyes gleamed. She was still in awe at her lucky break. And she replied:

“Mommy, I woke up in the middle of the night and came down to give you a kiss. Then you leaned over and pulled me in!”.

As my children grow up I am finding myself having to deal with some tough situations. Do children grow old before their time these days? When I was 10 years old my mother was still dressing me in frilly dresses and wouldn’t let me chew bubble gum. Last summer we were at the pool and there was a baby in the pool, chewing gum. A baby, too young to walk! I am not making this up.

So, we were driving along the other week when suddenly Baby Sister announced that I was going to be a grandmother. Luckily I had eaten that morning and had my wits about me so it did not take me long to remember that she is 5. Turned out she was talking about the future, when I am really old (because I am already old), and she will be living in San Francisco, but she will still love me and will send me postcards. And she will have a baby girl.

Phew. That’s OK then.

But the next thing out of her mouth? She wanted to be go to cheer camp and learn to be a cheerleader.

No harm in that, surely? I can indulge my little angel and sign her up for cheer camp right now! But … it’s just … I didn’t grow up with cheerleaders except as the ditzy sidekicks on American sitcoms, and in my mind cheerleading is on somewhere on a par with pageants. Harmless, but … OMG will they make her wear pancake makeup?

Then we were at the park and mysteriously all my friends had to leave for one fancy engagement or another (or because their toddlers had pooped their pants). And that’s when it all kicked off. First Baby Sister came running up to me, all breathless, to tell me she had a boyfriend, although she didn’t know his name because she couldn’t understand when he said it, she thought it was a funny name! I asked him and his name was Billy. So off she went to play on the big tire with Billy, and Billy’s Mom, complicit in the whole thing, pushing them while they twirled and laughed.

Next the T-Bot came running up chased by two girls who he insisted were called Annie and Oakley and I thought how sophisticated for 7 year olds to give false names. Except that later, as we were leaving, one of them came running up to us and thrust a piece of paper into his hand with her name and phone number and it did indeed say Oakley. Although come to think of it, it may also have been a false number. Sigh. Girls are so worldly wise these days.

So the next morning the T-Bot came to me with his little scrap of paper and asked to put it on the fridge for safe keeping. With an extra strong magnet. I obliged, probing casually, “do you think you might call her?”.

(Not wanting to be an interfering parent here but is seven too young to date?)

Well, Mommy” he said ” It’s just in case I do need to talk to her”. He thought a little more. “Maybe I could call her another day”.

“Yeah T-Bot” piped up Baby Sister “When you get a cellphone!”

The Future. Maybe more than I can handle.

Happy 4th! Have a Great Weekend!

Saturday was The Wictor’s birthday. He turned three.

He was not having a party, so I took my current relaxed parenting strategy to extremes.

As in, we did not tell him it was his birthday until I had had time to go out to Wal-Mart (the only place open at 8am apart from Tarjay whose toy department is getting pretty dire) and grab a few toys and refreshments, come home, blow up some balloons, and throw some Spongebob decorations onto the cake.

I have no shame. But I was also counting on him possessing the esthetic appreciation of a just-turned-three year old:

He loved his cake just fine. And his birthday too. In the afternoon we went swimming, just like every other day, and then had M&M-shaped ice creams (did you know they make ice creams in the shape of M&Ms, The Wictor’s favorite candies?) and cupcakes.

He was the happiest boy in the world.

P.S. Oh, and here’s another thing: those hastily chosen Wal-Mart toys? Also a Big Hit. For the record, the hands-down favorite is Handy Manny’s Fix-It Phone. He spent every available moment in the afternoon “‘pairing the co-pooter” and screaming when his brother and sister got too close.

They were like lionesses circling for the kill, so badly did they want to get their hands on the toy. It made for a pretty noisy afternoon.

And then at some point he must have realized he was now three and so very gwown up and let them each have a turn.

And I swear I heard the three of them purring.

In two weeks he will turn three. He seems to be, out of all of my children (and I count The Daddy and the cat here too), the most normal.  He does normal pre-schooler things. He reacts as an almost-three-year-old should to new challenges, routines, stimulus. He sits when he is asked to sit. He fingerpaints when he is asked to fingerpaint. He takes pride in going potty. Sometimes he refuses to do these things and throws himself on the floor wailing and thrashing in a Terrible Threes tantrum. But only at home. Nobody looks at The Wictor and passes judgement. He is a normal little boy, doing normal little boy things.

And yet, he is scarily switched on. “Mommy,” he told me one day, in that matter of fact way of his, “ice is like water”. He notices supermarket signs on the horizon, tiny caterpillars on leaves. He is observant. More than other children his age? I don’t know.  But he certainly can articulate what he sees.

Last week, he passed another Normal Little Boy milestone. I was out with Baby Sister running some errands, when there was a knock on the front door. The Daddy answered it and found the neighbor standing there. She and the Daddy had a very short conversation and then she pointed to our youngest son. The Daddy stepped out into the front yard and squinted at The Wictor. He looked something like this:

;

I didn’t forget to insert a photo. That is, in fact, how The Wictor looked to The Daddy from his vantage point on the front doorstep.

So The Daddy took himself off down the street to where The Wictor stood in someone’s front yard. When he reached him, he asked him sternly what he was doing and told him he wasn’t supposed to be out on the road.

“But, Daddy”, said The Wictor calmly, ” I am looking for Mommy”.

Which was The Daddy’s cue to launch into a lecture on safety. In our neighborhood there are no sidewalks.

(We are too tough for sidewalks, out here in the Houston suburbs, where The Car is King The Truck is King).

“But Daddy”, said The Wictor patiently, “I walked on the lawns”.

Later it all came out, the details of our youngest’s daring escape.

“The two boys playing Kick the Ball!”

“The Big Boy said “Go back! Go back inside your house!” ”

Thank goodness for the neighbors.

We get a lot of Lost Dog signs up in our neighborhood. People are very careless with their canine friends and the children get very excited when they see another fluffy face posted with a phone number and sometimes even a reward. They run through the possibilities quickly, concisely:  finding the dog, calling the owner, getting the reward, spending the reward, getting the dog home in time for his much needed medication…

Later that night The Daddy solemnly told the assembled family that if it wasn’t for the neighbor we would have had to put a sign up for The Wictor. Lost Wictor. The T-Bot and Baby Sister were excited. They very expertly planned losing The Wictor again, making the signs, putting his little snub nosed face on the paper. Sticking it around the environs. Someone would find the Wictor and bring him home and all would be OK with the world. We would eat ice cream.

Myself? I am putting my faith in a better lock for the back gate.

Just in case anybody has been losing sleep over it, I found my lost scanner cable. But now I have mislaid the battery charger for my camera.

So I as unable to take photos today of The Wictor wearing candy pink nail polish on his fingers and toes. I am devastated.

What? He insisted and really, he is 2 and will likely not be leaving the house tomorrrow.

I did rethink, though, when I came across this link.

Last night The Wictor didn’t want to go to sleep. So I lay down next to him and promptly fell asleep until 9. And it’s lucky I did, because this is how my schedule for the evening turned out:

12.30: Go to bed

1.00ish: Fall asleep

3.30 am: Woken up by a loud sound, like a toad croaking but inside the house. It woke up The Daddy too. We traced the noise to our en suite toilet. Blocked and booming, apparently because it was attempting to unblock itself. I know, weird, I have never experienced that either. When we flushed the toilet it overflowed, but it was clean water and the noise stopped so we went back to bed.

4amish: Woken by the sound of a child screaming in the distance. I went out into the lounge to listen but couldn’t hear anything. Realized it was actually The Daddy, snore-whistling. Went back to bed.

Sometime after 4: Woken by the the sound of running back and forth upstairs. Baby Sister is not supposed to come downstairs at night unless it is “something important” and it seems she kept changing her mind as to whether this was something important. In the end I went up and she decided she had had a bad dream. Lay down in her bed and fell asleep.

Sometime after sometime after 4: Woken by The Wictor patting my face. It was still dark. Took him back to bed, lay down next to him and fell asleep. Again.

Around 7: Baby Sister came in and woke us both up.  I was so tired I kept insisting it was still nighttime, but my children were wiser and soon had the light on and every battery-operated toy we own up and running.

I know what sleep deprivation is, I didn’t really sleep much for six years.

But it turns out it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit.

I hope I make it to midnight tonight. In case I don’t - Happy New Year!

Despite my very best efforts, The Wictor is the only one of my kids who is still truly bilingual. But he is at the age where he is muddling up the languages - mixing up the vocabulary and trying out grammatical rules on one language which belong with the other. This is a perfectly normal stage and they soon work things out by themselves. In the meantime, it can make for some cute little conversations.

Yesterday as we were leaving the supermarket together, it started to rain.

“Garde Maman!” he said, “C’est pleut!”

“Il pleut”, I corrected absently.

“Oui Maman! C’est pleut -ing!”

Apologies to non French speakers out there, usually I translate things my kids say, but this one doesn’t really work in translation.

Baby Sister still understands French but prefers to converse in English now. Unless she wants something or just wants to please. This morning she came to give me a “present” of a bow from one of her Christmas parcels.

“Maman! ” she said proudly, “Un cadeau pour toi! Une Beau! A bow!”

I hope everybody had a great Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Just Another Winter Week!