Big 6

Ridge's 6th birthday was yesterday. This year he informed us that he wanted to choose his presents himself. This idea originated with the arrival of the Fisher-Price toy catalog that had a few pages of GeoTrax. His friend, Eric, has a great GeoTrax collection that Ridge loves to play with each time he goes to Eric's house. So after looking through the catalog and at his choices online he decided that he needed to make sure he got exactly what he wanted. We explained giftcards to him, this idea was quite exciting, and he asked for them from his grandma (hence the anticipation for birthday cards in the mail). Oh, he actually did want one present to open from us but wanted it to be a Lego Bionicle to open in the morning before school. So he opened the bionicle and the present from grandma Blaser in the morning. For his special dinner we met at the mall and ate at ThaiGo -- we all love their pad thai and fried rice and special thaigo chicken -- then Eric took Cannon* and Laine home and Ridge and I headed to ToysRUs to spend that gift card. We walked in and saw a huge Kinex display that he got really excited about. Then we walked through the Lego section, and talked about what he could get and what was too expensive. We wound our way through the trains and more building sets then finally found the GeoTrax which are in the preschool section. Ridge was excited to see them at first but then with a closer look had second thoughts. I think he was expecting a set with a lot of tracks -- he is a master train track builder now and likes to figure out new ways to put all of our wooden tracks together -- and the set that we found was a basic track. I explained that at first he would have just those tracks but he could expand his set by asking for more tracks at Christmas. So he said he would think about the Geos and wanted to look at the Legos more. He ended up with two lego sets, one actual Lego brand that builds a semi-truck and the other one a compatible brand army set. Then we headed to Target so he could spend his birthday money on Bionicles. He was generous and bought one for Cannon as well which made Cannon very happy. He was a very happy birthday boy.

While we were walking to ToysRUs Ridge told me that he liked being able to spend time with me, just the two of us. It made me realize that Eric and I need to make an effort to have one on one time with each of our kids more. And it made me feel so happy that Ridge likes to be with me because I like to be with him too. He chats more when it is just us, he even told me, "there's this girl at school and she, what's that word, she has a crush on me. Yeah, she's crushing me." So I asked how he knew that and I guess she told him. She tries to kiss him at recess and has a crush on him because he is cool.

* Cannon was so sad that he couldn't join us at ToysRUs. Even the lure of Dairy Queen treats didn't make him feel better. He ended up falling asleep in the car on the way home so he didn't get to see the birthday bounty in person but he did wake up at 11:30 (which he often does) and was crying and saying that he wanted to come with me, he didn't want me to go. So I consoled him and told him I was home and not going anywhere. Then he woke up again around midnight crying about the same thing. At 6:30am he woke up and was yelling and crying again about the ToysRUs trip. So I had him come downstairs (Eric was already gone) and climb into bed with me. Ridge came down a few minutes later and so we all got up and started building Legos. After school Ridge came home and immediately started playing Legos. He did that for nearly 3 hours, he didn't even ask for a snack which is unheard of. Then after dinner he and Eric worked on the semi-truck together and I tried to build a military helicopter for Cannon. After more than an hour of trying to build that thing my head was killing me and I was not feeling patient anymore so Eric is going to finish it and I read Cannon stories and put him to bed.