How a boy celebrates turning five

Today my eldest is turning five. This little man graduated preschool a few weeks ago and will be entering kindergarten in the fall. Don’t ask me what happened during the past five years, I’m not sure I remember it all. Overall I find motherhood a very humble job. After you’ve been peed on, pooped on and barfed on so many times, somehow you can still look at your child and think he’s the most precious gift in the world. I guess it’s why they call it unconditional love.

At the age of five, my son thinks he doesn’t need to go to school anymore because he already “knows it all”. Wow, I thought such cocky statement only came out of a teenager’s mouth. A five-year-old proved me wrong. Clearly, I don’t know it all. When he grows up, he wants to be a police officer. He’d also like to be an astronaut, a diver and a painter. And a writer too. At least he won’t have time to get bored. And I tell him he can be anything he wants to be. Because he can.

We were going to throw the usual birthday party with the required set of playmates, their parents, the expected entertainment and party favors for them all. Then I thought, what will my son remember from this two-hour-long birthday party several years from now? Probably not much. So I suggested something different. Something more “adventurous” we could do as a family. Something that will create lifelong memories.

So we’re scratching the idea of a typical birthday party and instead are taking a train ride on Amtrack from San Diego to Anaheim, two hours each way, to Downtown Disney. We’re not going to Disneyland (too crowded and too expensive in the summer) but instead will enjoy the shops and the entertainment of the Disney village for a few hours. The kids will even have the opportunity to pick a few goodies at the gift shops. I hope we’ll have lunch in the jungle of the Rainforest Cafe, so the kids can witness a thunderstorm every 10 minutes. Hey, we live in San Diego, we don’t get thunderstorms so this is sure to have a novelty effect. The kids can’t wait to first ride the train, then take a taxi from the station to Disneyland. Kids this age are so easy to entertain, I wish they didn’t turn into blasé teenagers later on.

Of course, no birthday would be complete without a birthday cake. As part of my 101 in 1001 challenge, I’m making my son’s birthday cake from scratch. He asked for a Spider-Man cake and the decoration is all I have left to do. Gosh, I hope a five-year old can be forgiving… You’ll get to see embarassing pictures when I post an update about my 101 in 1001 in early August. In the meantime, my son is taking chocolate madeleines to school today to share with his classmates. These are so good, I wish they stayed home for us to eat.

Can’t have madeleines? Let us eat cake!

Chocolate madeleines

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Happy birthday, little man!

Buzz Lightyear birthday cupcake

I need to thank Food4Less for making huge cupcakes with Toy Story decorations! You’re going to make a birthday boy very happy until his official birthday party next Saturday.

My son is turning four tomorrow, and I honestly have no idea where the past four years have gone. Everything has happened so quickly that it could easily look like a blur. And yet, in the middle of it all, some events are so clearly imprinted in my mind, they could have happened just yesterday…

The first sonogram and heartbeat sound, the first kick, hearing my son catch his first breath and seeing him out of my womb for the first time, the first time holding him and helping him latch, the day we took him home, the first weeks bonding as a new family, his first smile, the first day I left him at daycare to go back to work full of guilt, his first laugh, his first taste of rice cereal, his cute army crawl, the first time he called me (and his dad) “mama”, his first real hug and kiss, his first hand sign (“more”), his ever-expanding hand signs and spoken vocabulary, his first step (run, baby, run!), his first pretend-play with a phone, his first jet airplane ride, the day he met his little brother in the hospital, his first day at preschool, his first friends, his first jokes, his first dip in the pool, his first time on local TV, his first big boy bike ride, and even today, his first day at a new preschool… And there’s so much more to come in the years ahead of us!

Gosh, time flies when you’re having fun, so it’s important to notice and enjoy those special moments as they are kind enough to appear in time. As Mr/Ms Anonymous said it so well years ago, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

Carpe diem and happy birthday, little man!

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Where do I get my “imperfect mom of the year” award?

My job situation allows me to work from home most of the time, but it also requires me to travel out of town for a few days every other week. Because of many co-workers being away, I had to delay this week’s trip to next week, allowing me to schedule meetings with the appropriate during my visit to the office.

The other night, my significant other and I were discussing my son’s upcoming 4th birthday party, scheduled for July 24, when he pointed out that I would be out of town for my son’s birthday on July 20. I quickly glanced at the calendar and realized he was right. Holy crap, how did I manage to do that??? Ugh, nice job, mama, for scheduling your business trip on your child’s special day!

I can fix this by either apologizing in advance to my son for not being home on his birthday, or pretending that his birthday is Monday and not Tuesday, while I’m still in town. But that would make me look like an even lousier mom, right? I guess I’d better find a really awsome Buzz Lightyear birthday cake to make up for this…

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Turning 40 today – how I survived the big 40…

40 and fabulous T-shirt

Wow, I turned 40 today and I made it through the day without flipping out! Maybe it will hit me hard when I wake up tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal at this moment. I remember when my own mother was 40. I was 15 myself and back then, I thought she was sooooo old… Today, I’m the one reaching that milestone and my perspective is obviously different. I was 36 when I had my first child and 38 for the second, so to my 15-year-old self, I’d look quite ancient!

Growing up (and eventually growing older) has quite a few advantages in my opinion. When I turned 20, I didn’t know anything about life and I didn’t care. The world was completely open and out there for me to discover. Over the next 10 years I figured things out and found myself, including by moving to another continent and sticking to a job I would enjoy long-term. By the time I turned 30, I felt like I finally graduated to adulthood, and it was a cool place to be. Another 10 years have gone by and at 40, I feel like I have proven myself to other people (I have a career and I can handle two kids, well, most of the time) and now I’d like to prove to myself that I can develop some other talents and interests. Which talents, I’m not sure yet, but that’s what makes life interesting every day.

And yes, my “40 and fabulous” T-shirt from Cafe Press is in the mail, and I can’t wait to wear it! To all moms out there 40 and over, carpe diem! As KebMo says it so well, “life is beautiful, life is wondrous…”

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