Happy Birthday, Cailan!

Happy birthday, my sweet little man!

Here we are the Wednesday before his birthday, making cookies for Cailan to take to school. We made letter cookies, just like last year. Chris and Bobbie mixed up the dough in the morning so it could chill for several hours. We started making them right after dinner but it was still 9:30 before Cailan went to bed. The first of many late nights. After school on Thursday, I asked Cailan what letter he got. "I had a C and an O, and if you spell them that makes CO!"


This picture is from Friday night, Cailan's birthday. We had butterfly noodles (his favorite) with asparagus for dinner. The cake is a Moo-less Chocolate Pie, made from silken tofu and melted chocolate chips on a graham cracker crust. Cailan made a good attempt at blowing out the candles, but he needed some help to actually get them extinguished.


He enjoyed his cake very much!


After cake, it was time to open presents. Cailan got an Automoblox truck from Grandpa and Grandma Bonnie. He liked it a lot, but I think the adults liked it even more. We all loved the super-smooth wood of the truck body, the easy-rolling rubber wheels, and it is so much fun to take apart and put back together.


He got a Puff the Magic Dragon book from SCAQ. It has gorgeous illustrations - I really like the colors in it. We need to find a calm moment to look at the book and listen to the CD, but that certainly didn't happen amidst the present mayhem.


Grandma Bobbie gave him an illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. It was amazing to watch him leaf through the book for the first time and read the names of 20 or 30 different dinosaurs; I was totally impressed that he was able to recognize the names in a new context. She also gave him a magnetic dinosaur scene (by far the biggest hit of the evening) and a Tyrranosaurus rex floor puzzle.




The last present, from Chris and I, was a glider bike. Cailan has such short legs that it was hard to get the seat low enough for him to straddle the bike, but he has learned to push it around the living room. The picture is blurry because he's moving so fast! Or maybe it's blurry because it was almost 11 p.m. and Chris and I were about to fall asleep, but Cailan was still going strong.