Jay and Julie: Theo and Cousins

Written at least 2 weeks ago:
On Friday Theo asked me why we didn't have the book Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. I told him that we didn't have that book, but we'd gotten it from the library before and could again.
He then asked, "Why can't we have all the books from the library?"
"Well, they let us take out a lot, but we can only take as many as we can carry." The lending limit is 50, so we just take as many as can fill a backpack.
"I wish we had all the books!" Theo said excitedly.
"But then no one else could borrow them. We don't need them all at the same time."
"But people could come over here and borrow books."
My child wishes he could live at a library.

A few days ago I had chili in the crock pot so that I actually didn't have to be making dinner in the evening.

Theo was being really cute and I wanted to record it even if it wasn't the most exciting story for the blog.

He said that it was Horsie's birthday and that we needed to do something for her. Horsie is a stuffed animal that Mitsu got him on our California trip a few years back.

He wanted a cookie sheet from the kitchen. Then he said that we needed to put his magnet letters on the pan. After that, he said that it was dough and needed to be baked into cookies. I was nervous that he would want to put the magnet letter "cookies" in the actual oven, but instead he put them under a big chair, and then asked me to set a timer on my phone for when they come out.

After that he put them into a shoe box. When I told him that the lid had gotten wet and was thrown away, we folded a piece of paper for a lid. It shows that he was in a good mood that this fix worked and he didn't just cry a lot. Then he put Horsie on an upside down box and filled a basket with other stuffed animals. He told me, "You carry the birthday cookies, and I'll carry the guests."

I placed the box in front of Horsie and he turned the basket upside down and carefully arranged the guests on top of it. Then he announced that it was time to sing. We sang together -- him somewhat off-key but very cute -- and then Horsie blew out the candles. After that he chose an alphabet letter for each of him guests and helped them say, "Yum, yum, yum!" while they ate, for all 20 guests or so.

After that it was Penguin Chick's birthday. Repeat.

Mostly I was impressed by how all of it was his idea. It's fun since he is always talking about his next birthday and begging me to buy this or that for the cake or decorations. I tell him he needs to wait until closer to his birthday.

Written today:

To add to the birthday pretend story, I wanted to add that Theo and I called Gabi to wish her Happy Birthday. Theo sang Happy Birthday to her without any prompting. After the call he told me that we needed to go to her party and was quite upset when I explained that we will visit her later this year, but not for her birthday.

Last week we hd lots of cousin times. While poor, wonderful Jay worked, we met Steve and his 2 kids for lots of fun: hiking, Pump it Up, the park, the Planetarium. We lso had a siblings salsa and Root Beer tasting night -- A&W won the root beer contest. Jay came to some of that, which made his niblings happy.

at Pump it Up Theo was pretty afraid of the big slides. He was okay if I held his hand and went down with him, but that was apparently against the rules. Well Clara convinced him to go down by himself and he became excited with it. Thanks, Clara.