Birthday Season

November: Birthday season is upon us. Xander turned four on November 6th, and Kai will turn a year old on December 5th.

We celebrated Xander's birthday last weekend, at Cordonices Park in Berkeley. The main attraction: a 40-foot long cement slide, (a.k.a. the Scary Slide, the lawsuit slide). About fifteen kids and their parents came to the party--most of them friends of Xander's from preschool. As expected, the slide was a hit, though there was a brief period at the beginning when it seemed like not such a good idea. (15 preschoolers + pizza + cake + 40-foot-long concrete slide = high potential for broken bones + concussions) After a rough start, in which Xander excitedly fell off the top of the slide and scraped his face, and another girl went down the slide and started to cry in fright, the kids settled in and there were no more incidents. Well, there was a preschool version of a fist fight at one point at the top of the slide, but that was quickly cleared up after we reestablished turn-taking and clarified that everyone could use the slide, not just the kids at Xander's birthday party.

I mommed out and made Xander a BART train cake.

Xander much happier, after viewing his
BART train birthday cake! (He has paint on his
face from Dia de Los Muertos)

On Halloween, Xander's teachers had all the kids dress up in costumes and took their photos. We got a CD of all the pictures on Friday, and they are great--and very artistic. Xander wasn't so into the dressing up. He's more of a realist--right now he's playing "traffic jam." However, we did get one photo (of the 188 they sent home) with him in it.

For Halloween, preschool had all the kids dress up and took pictures.

Xander wasn't too interested--it was yucky. Sad bumblebee.

Kai is beginning to stand up on his own for a few seconds at a time. He's babbling all the time - mama, dada and nanda for Xander. He also understands Spanish--ask donde esta el perro? and he'll point to the picture of the dog. Next installment will include lots of pictures of Kai. Poor second child, is he getting short shrift? (OK, I had to look up short shrift, as I wasn't sure what a shrift was or if I was misspelling the phrase.)