Birthday Undercover(s)

Usually, I'm one to celebrate birthdays. In fact, I like to think that I have not only a birthday, but a birthday week. JR has clearly inherited this trait.

OTOH, this year I am facing one of those milestone birthdays that I'm not quite ready to face. So I've told WS not to make a big deal. No party. Don't worry about presents. Etc., etc. I even told my MIL, to whom not celebrating a birthday is a cardinal crime, that I don't really want to celebrate.

Well, this is not something I have been able to impress upon JR.

So this morning, despite the fact that I was up at 6:00 folding clothes, when he woke up he informed his dad that they would be making me breakfast in bed as a "surprise". He came and found me at the computer, placed a gold crown upon my head, instructed me to get back into bed, and "surprised" me with a lovely breakfast of french toast made with panettone (mmm!), tea with milk and sugar, the table settings wrapped in a paper towel carefully threaded into a napkin ring - and now I'm banished upstairs while he works on my card.

I love this kid.

Toothfairy Alert

Last night, sitting in a local park enjoying water ice, JR came over and handed me a bloody biscotti (purchased to accompany his dad's coffee) and said "Mommy, my mouth hurts." Peering into his little bloody mouth, we saw that there was no longer a tooth in his bottom front. We searched near where he'd been sitting, but could find nothing. Tears were flowing. Luckily, his friend's big sister had the presence of mind to tell JR that it didn't matter if he couldn't find the tooth; all he had to do was write a note and tell her he'd lost it.

So last night we carefully placed the note under his pillow: "Dear Toothfairy, I lost my tooth. Maybe you can find it near the bench in the park."

By 5:00 a.m. this morning, the tears had dried and the gap-toothed smile was wide with the discovery of the toothfairy's payment in trade for the missing tooth.

Grossology

After JR's music class on Wednesday nights, we often go to dinner with his classmate Sam. The boys are both high energy, so we tend to frequent local burger joints where the fries are yummy and no one looks askance at boisterous behavior.

The only problem with burger joints is that the main vegetable featured on the menu is usually ketchup. And ketchup truly skeeves me. It is the one food item that makes me want to run for cover and hide in the bathroom until the dry heaves have subsided.

JR and Sam, however, love it.

So tonight, there we are at a new local burger joint and the boys are in rare form (of course, with these boys, it's not such a rare form). They have practiced running slides through the tables. They have hidden under the tables. Sam has unshelled a peanut, dropped it on the floor and then retrieved it and popped it into his mouth before I had a chance to say "Don't eat that!" (Sam's mom was over at the condiment counter, filling up little cups of ketchup for the table at the time). JR has stuffed fries in his mouth and Sam and JR have extended fries from their nose and tried to fight like swordfish with them. My cheeseburger, delicious but gulped between "put that downs" and "watch your elbows" is starting to form a solid lump in the pit of my stomach.

And at that point my darling son decides to out gross all of us. He takes his lemonade straw, places it in his ketchup cup and ....

(I'm not truly sure what happened next because Sam's mother kindly covered my eyes and told me when it was safe to look). All I know is that when my eyes were uncovered, the ketchup cup was empty and JR's mouth was unkissably stained with red.

"Not that this matters to you," she said, "but at least it was Heinz."