Gah! How Did This Happen?!

My baby, my boy, my oldest son turned 5 years old yesterday. FIVE!! I mentioned in Saturday's post how Zeke was excited to take down the Christmas stuff so we could focus on his birthday. And I have to say, I think it was a pretty good birthday.

Sunday night, while he was sleeping, I made and hung this banner for him, so it would be up, "decorating the house" when he woke up in the morning. He was thrilled, and spent a good 5 minutes just looking at it, naming all of the letters over and over. Okay, maybe it was more like 2 minutes because he needed to get ready for school.

That's right, not only was it Zeke's birthday yesterday, but it was also his first day back to school, truly making it an awesome day. I brought some cupcakes that I made to his school, a few minutes before his class was over. Since I had a bunch of cupcakes, we invited the other preschool class there to join Zeke's class for the special snack. (Every Monday they open the wall between the 2 classrooms and do big group activities, so they were all together and cleaning up anyway when I got there.)

Now, these cupcakes were somewhat special. See, there's this sweet girl in Zeke's class who has all sorts of physical delays and speech delays, and what's it, and my heart just melts whenever I see her because she is the happiest, sweetest girl in spite of it all. Whenever the bus brings Zeke home, this girl and I say hi to each other through the bus window a good 4-6 times. But to top everything off, the girl has food allergies and diet restrictions, so she hardly ever gets to have the same snacks as the other kids - especially at "parties" and things (like the kids will be eating cupcakes and she'll be eating veggie curls or something). So I asked what her allergies were so I could make something for the class that she could have too. Therefore, the cupcakes I made for Zeke's class were gluten free and dairy free. They were a little extra work (and a little extra money), but it was so worth it when this girl, with cupcake all over her face and hands, yelled, "I LOVE CUPCAKES!!" The other kids seemed to love them too, and couldn't even tell the difference.

After school it was lunch and naps (and some "Happy Birthday" phone calls from grandparents and aunts). While the birthday boy was napping I was whipping up some more cupcakes (regular ones this time). He originally wanted a Spider-man cake. But then he saw the chocolate frosting with the sprinkles in the lid at the store and changed his mind to that, on cupcakes. So I thought I could use the sprinkles on some and then draw Spidey's face on some, so he could have both (since the amount of sprinles they give you is no where near enough for 2 dozen cupcakes). That didn't really work out so well since cupcakes are a really small space to draw on, so I did half with sprinkles, then drew a spider on some of them, bats on others (yes, those black blobs are bats), and wrote his name on others since I was running out of time.

Daddy came home from work early, we had some dinner. Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, as the birthday boy requested, despite my trying to change his mind to something else. Then Zeke blew out the candles on his cupcakes, ate the yummy cupcakes, opened his presents, and watched "Toy Story 3" (it was one of his presents from us).

When it was all over, off to bed one tired, but very happy 5-year-old. Happy birthday sweet boy. I pray that 5 will be a wonderful age for you, that this will be a great year for you. We love you Ezekiel.