The birthday party was a big success for all concerned.

AJ had woken up at the crack of dawn yesterday in anticipation of attending his friend Z�s third birthday party. He was ready to leave by 6 and it took a lot of convincing to get him to conced to waiting for a few more hours. By 9:30 it was clear that if a nap didn�t take place we were in for a meltdown. Amazingly, AJ agreed with us. Unfortunately, it took us a while to get around to the nap part. Let�s just call AJ �The Boy who Cried �Potty.�� In the last couple of days he has decided that he is interested in getting rid of the diapers (Hooray!) but he can�t quite figure out when he needs to go and has decided to err on the side of caution. The result was potty trips every 15 minutes all morning. This may not sound bad to you non-parents, but the process of getting a two-year old onto the potty � the laborious removal of the pants and diapers, the convincing him that he can keep his shirt on while sitting there, the choosing of books to read aloud during the process � takes some time. So by the time AJ went down for his nap, we were exhausted. I had to wake him up to put him in the car to head to the party. I was worried that he�d be upset, but as soon as I opened the door to his room, he popped his sleepy head over the edge of his crib and asked, �Is it time to go to Z�s house yet?�

As promised, almost all the birthday trappings were downstairs in the playroom, a kids only space, as Z wanted it to be just AJ and her and no one else. Upon our arrival, they proceeded to ransack the place while the grownups enjoyed some less destructive pursuits upstairs. Among the guests were some good friends � a former coworker of Z�s mom and I and her husband � whom I haven�t seen in over two years.

J is a wonderful cook and has a gift for taking simple food and making it seem terribly elegant. Lunch was grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, carrot soup and salad with a fantastic lemony dressing. Dessert was, of course, birthday cake. The theme of the day was ladybugs, and J made a spectacular cake shaped like a ladybug and beautifully iced. Z and AJ each got one of her eyes. The grownups devoured the rest of her, spots and all while talking about the marvels of J�s cakes past. For Z�s first birthday, she engineered an Eiffel Tower for a Madeline-themed party. Last year was a rainbow fish. AJ was charmed to be sent home with a box of ladybug toys and stickers and a cupcake version of the larger cake, along with a helium filled ladybug balloon.

AJ talked about the party all the way home, recapping his favorite moments: �Playing in the house [Z�s new play tent shaped like a house, complete with doors and shutters] and on the slide in the backyard and eating cake.� When we had the cupcake after dinner, he insisted on pretending it was his birthday. We gave him a paper hat, put a candle in the cupcake and sang happy birthday to AJ. In the bathtub, we played with his favorite toys, a set of letters and numbers that stick to the wall of the bathtub. He pulled out the Z and said, �Let�s pretend this is Z.� He carried it around with him the rest of the night, having long conversations about the party and birthdays and hula hoops. He could not be persuaded to part with it at bedtime and went to sleep with it gripped tightly in his little fist.

We did manage one non-Z related activities. It was nearly 60 today, so we spent some time in the garden after we got home, marveling at how much snow had melted and discovering the yellowish-green spears of daffodils peeking around the leaves in the woods. Thousands of daffodils carpet most of the wooded area in our yard for a few brief weeks each spring, so the discovery of their emergence is cause for celebration. We also cut some forsythia to force into bloom in vases and played some rather competitive whiffle ball, where AJ tried and tried to hit the ball to the moon and, when pitching, bragged about his knuckleball.

0 people said it like they meant it