At the end of November we flew home from Florida, which meant we had a little recovery time on Sunday after taking the boys to swim class, and then on Monday, December 2nd, Aaron turned 4 years old! Given the timing of holidays and travel plans of our own and friends, we decided to decorate the dining room for his birthday and bring a whole bunch of cupcakes to his preschool so he could celebrate with his classmates, but we’d have his birthday party over the next weekend.
It worked out really well, and on Saturday we were joined by our first au pair (who got married and stayed in the US), their second au pair (who is now going to school in the US) and their current au pair! Maybe next year we’ll do a birthday with other kids, but none of us were ready for that yet.
As requested, he had a cake with dark blue frosting and a Chase from Paw Patrol decorating theme.
And his au pairs brought him gifts, which is always fun.
He’s really grown up in these past few months. I think being in preschool is helping him, but generally he seems to have just really taken off conversationally. He’s also more strongly communicating his preference for things, like dinosaurs and drawing, so much drawing. I love the little person he’s growing into.
Beyond the birthday, December didn’t exactly unfold the way we expected. I had an emergency appendectomy the day before the party, which I’ll write about soon, and it knocked me out of commission until our trip to Philadelphia on the 18th. But before we left we made time to go over to our favorite donut shop, Rudy’s Donuts, which was closing for good. I’m really bummed, it was so good and we could walk there as a nice Saturday or Sunday adventure. But the owners are retiring and I that’s certainly a conclusion of business that I can respect. The news had gotten out about their pending closure though, and the weekend we went was the weekend before they closed and the line looped around inside the building! I can’t imagine how it was their final weekend.
As we packed for Philadelphia the boys got to pack their new Lego luggage! We picked the pair of suitcases up at Costco and they came with matching backpacks. This was the first trip where the boys would have their “own” luggage (what ended up in the bags was only partially theirs). In general, it was a success, though there were several times at the airport where they asked adults to pull them for a while.
The boys are growing up!