THREE

(Written Sunday)
My little Henry achieved the age of THREE on Friday.  I am not ready for this.  Henry is still supposed to be my little boy, snuggly and sweet and charming.  (He is all of those.)  Henry being three means he's almost four, and that is so close to five.  And I'm not ready for him to learn to ride a bike, or pull his hand out of mine in the grocery store, or run to help Daddy take groceries out of the van.

The good thing is, I don't have to be ready, because it's not now.  Henry is growing just one day at a time, the same as every one of us.  Every day he becomes a little more independent, and every day I grow a little more accustomed to the idea.  For instance, we now allow him to be in the loft with Rowan's drum set.

I pulled Henry's toy drum out of the attic to distract him, but it didn't work out quite like I'd planned.

 Today we celebrated Henry's birthday.  We had a very difficult time deciding when to celebrate.  Weekdays we can't celebrate in the evenings, or Matthew wouldn't be there.  Saturdays it can't be during the day or Matthew can't be there.  Celebrating on Sundays means at least one of my sisters is automatically excluded.  To complicate matters further, one of my sisters and a nephew have birthdays tomorrow.

We finally settled on Sunday as the most likely day for the maximum amount of people to make it here, especially important because Daddy could be here.  Because I'm great at planning ahead, I sent a notification to my family on Thursday.  Some replied in the negative.  Some didn't bother to reply at all.  Some had last-minute issues this morning and texted that they couldn't make it.  (I am too familiar with that; I've missed a nephew's birthday and my sister's baby shower in the last week, sadly.)  Long story short, not a single person showed up.

Henry kept me up last night, so I didn't get to sleep until around 5:00 a.m.  I spent the morning making two kinds of cupcakes (36 cupcakes total), and sending my husband out for pizza, before seeing all the cancellation texts on my phone.  I felt strongly like scrapping the whole thing and going to bed.  After all, Henry didn't know we had anything special planned for the day.  He hardly knows what a birthday is.  As far as he was concerned, it was just another Sunday.

But--we went ahead and sang, and I "helped" Henry blow out his candle.  I wish I had pictures but I was so stressed and bothered that I didn't even think of my camera. 

(Written Monday...sort of.)
Well, long story short, Henry had a great birthday.  A neighbor boy came over and shot lots of pictures of Henry opening his presents (which he loved).  We ate cupcakes.  Lots of them.  And ice cream.  I got over my moodiness.  I even slept Sunday night, which was great.

It's still hard to believe he's three.