Me and The Boys: Five

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March 23, 2009

Five

Yesterday was Gabe's 5th birthday, and his third celebration of that birthday. This time we whooped it up with Scott's parents and his sister, and had a great time. We had a repeat of Thanksgiving - turkey dinner with all the trimmings - and a Hot Wheels cake for dessert.

We only bought Gabe a few things, but they were things that he's been wanting for a while, and he was sooooo excited about them!

He's been so hyped up about his big day for so long, and so anxious to open gifts, so I decided to let him open one present when he woke up in the morning, and I chose to let him open his marble race toy, and it was a great choice, because he and Dante proceeded to play with it - quietly and nicely - for nearly 2 hours! I never knew a marble cascading down a tower of plastic tubes could provide so much entertainment, but it did.

Dante has been having a bit of a hard time with it being Gabe's birthday, and has basically claimed all of Gabe's presents as his own, and kept saying yesterday that he was so "skyted" (his way of saying excited) to open his birthday presents. I think he feels like if he says it often enough, it'll come true.

And yesterday he got really confused by the fact that Gabe was opening a present in the morning - I think he thought it might be Christmas again, because he went over to the living room and said "Hey - we need the Christmas tree back!"

Gabe has been doing a really good job of sharing his new stuff with Dante, though. And yesterday, Dante saw that Gabe was wearing the Star Wars shirt that he got as a birthday present, and Dante insisted that he wear Gabe's Wall-E shirt - even though he has a Wall-E shirt of his own. I felt bad for him, so I told him he could wear it, and at first Gabe was upset, but I explained to him how hard it was for Dante to see Gabe getting all the presents, and he really understood and was fine with it after that, and even went over and gave Dante a big hug.

We learned from past experiences, too, and had Gabe open his presents well before dinner, so that we had plenty of time to open everything and set it up. His other big present was a Geo Trax train set, and they're both loving playing with it. I think it's a pretty cool toy, too, and the accessories are relatively inexpensive, so I might even go and get them a few more tracks to add to what they have. And we also got him a remote control car, and that was another big hit, too.

Gabe thoroughly enjoyed the day, and we definitely chose just the right gifts, because after we had gotten everything set up and he and Dante were happily playing, Gabe looked up and said "Well, I guess this is all the presents that I need!"

So my baby boy is 5. Hard to believe that 5 years ago we were sleep-deprived new parents stumbling around and trying to figure out what the hell we were doing.

A lot has changed in 5 years, and we're no longer nearly as sleep-deprived, but definitely still sometimes feel like we don't know what the hell we're doing.

But then I see Gabe settle down on the couch in the morning to watch cartoons, and say to Dante "Wanna come sit with me and give me a hug", and I think we must be doing something right.