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Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 3 (Age 5)

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Click here for Ages 1-3
Click here for Age 4

Age 5

By Andy’s 5th birthday, he had completed his first full year of pre-school, as well as a couple years in a weekly Gymboree program. Between the two, he had made a lot of friends and had also had the opportunity to attend quite a few of his friends’ birthday parties. This led us to think that it was a good idea to celebrate his 5th birthday (something of a milestone) with his first real birthday party with other kids.

We live in a townhouse that doesn’t have a yard or an overall design that would really be suited to having a large group of kids over. While there is a party room available for rent in our condominium complex, it isn’t really overly kid-friendly either. We realized that we really needed to find a kid-appropriate venue for the party.

Our first thought (and Andy’s first suggestion) was Farrell’s, having spent his birthday there the two previous years. We looked into it and found that the price wasn’t too out of line, but we had major reservations about whether or not it would really work all that well for a big group of pre-school aged kids. Other than the little merry-go-round, Mountasia really doesn’t offer much for kids that age and we were picturing a party that was little more than the kids all sitting around a big table eating ice cream and pizza.

Andy was still kind of pushing for having the party there, but we were able to placate him by promising a family visit there not too long after his birthday. We ended up going up there the weekend after his birthday for dinner and ice cream, inviting a few of our adult friends to meet up with us there as well. Of course, Andy again got in a bunch of rides on the little merry-go-round.

Having recently been to another kid’s birthday party that was held at a local play gym, we realized that it would be vastly preferable to go somewhere that the kids could run around and play. As I mentioned, we had been taking Andy to classes at a local Gymboree Play & Music location since he was really young.

We checked into it and found that their prices for birthday parties were within our budget and that they had availability on Andy’s actual birthday (which was on a Sunday that year). During his weekly class, we mentioned that we were considering having his birthday party there to his teacher, who is an outstanding teacher that Andy, and we, adored. The teacher responded by offering to host and run the party if we booked it, which pretty much instantly sealed the deal for us.

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Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 2 (Age 4)

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Click here for Part 1 (Ages 1-3)

Continuing my look back at my son’s previous birthdays in celebration of him turning 6 this week, here are my memories of his 4th birthday. As he has gotten older, I have found that I had a tendency to take more photos, so the remaining posts will cover just one year at a time.

Age 4 (2007)

Andy’s 3rd birthday was the first that he still remembered pretty well a year later. Because of that, he decided that he wanted to do pretty much the same thing as the year before, returning once again to Farrell’s. This time, we decided to forgo the formal birthday package and instead just let everyone order whatever they wanted off of the menu.

As with the previous year’s visit, we included some play time in the game area at Mountasia. Once again, Andy used the majority of the game/ride credits that we got for him to ride on the little merry-go-round. During this visit, he did also give skee-ball a try for the first time, although I really was doing most of the work.

A couple months before his 4th birthday, Andy started his first year of pre-school. For birthday kids, the teacher had a short celebration where the child was given a birthday crown and allowed to put candles onto a felt birthday cake.

Finally, we did also do the now-traditional cake and gift-opening at home on his actual birthday. Once again, the cake was an ice cream cake.

He had received most of his major gifts during the party at Farrell’s, but we gave him a toy fire truck that I had found at a really good sale price between the two parties and he also had gifts from his grandparents to open.

To Be Continued with Memories of Age 5.

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Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 1 (Ages 1-3)

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Today is my son’s 6th birthday! As a celebration of that big event, I thought I’d share some memories of his past birthday celebrations in posts over the next few days.

Age 1 (2004)

To celebrate his first birthday, we attended the Disneyland Birthday Celebration that they offer a couple times a day at the Plaza Inn restaurant on Main Street. At this event, everyone gets an undecorated cupcake along with small cups containing frosting and sprinkles to use to decorate them. A character named Pat E. Cake hosts the event and Mickey and Minnie Mouse also pay a visit. Quite a few of our friends were able to join us at the park for the party as well.

The first birthday also started our now usual tradition of going out somewhere for a bigger party, but also having a little family-only party at home with cake and the opening of his presents from us and various relatives.

This was also the one time that we attempted to make his birthday cake instead of buying one from the store, but we found that we generally lacked much cake decorating talent.

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First Week of Kindergarten

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Our son started Kindergarten this week, officially starting his journey through the public school system. This is definitely one of the most prominent of the well-known moments of mixed emotions experienced by parents. I am immensely proud of the smart and very personable kid and thoroughly enjoy the experience of seeing him grow and mature. At the same time, I miss the baby that he was and the ability for my wife and/or me to be there for every part of his life. Even as I write this, I know that this whole dilemma sounds kind of clichéd, but it also is unquestionably real.

I’m sure it is normal for us as parents to have quite a bit of apprehension and uncertainty as our son starts school. We have a lot of awareness of both his strengths and weaknesses and can’t help but wonder how each will affect his experience. We do know that our son is quite smart, even already having some pretty decent reading skills. He has known basics like his alphabet and counting since not too long after he learned to talk and he has even learned some simple math.

On the other hand, he also has some definite problems with listening and following directions, which are going to take some work to overcome. After his very first day of school, the teacher already noted that he wasn’t listening as well as he should and moved him to a desk closer to the front of the room. We’ve also recently learned that his eyesight is not very good. While he got his first set of eyeglasses yesterday, he is still nearly blind in one eye even with the lenses. Obviously, that is going to be a bit of a challenge to overcome and probably also explains why his motor skills haven’t been as strong as his intellectual talents.

Our son has been through 2 years of pre-school as well as a few months at a drop-off school-skills class, so we didn’t experience as much separation anxiety as some families do. Even when he first started pre-school, there really wasn’t any major problem when my wife left him for the first time, something that surprised us a bit since he had always had a really difficult time with babysitters. My wife, who is a stay-at-home mom, has probably had more of a difficult time with the adjustment than my son has.

The shift from pre-school to Kindergarten is still a big adjustment. His pre-school was only 4 days a week, 3-hours per day. The elementary school he is going to has a full day Kindergarten, which means 5 days a week, 6 1/2 hours per day. This includes lunch at school, which is also a pretty big change. The pre-school was a cooperative type, which meant that my wife stayed to assist with the class one day a week. It also had pretty much an open-door policy where parents were pretty free to stick around if there was something going on that they wanted to observe. Not surprisingly, Kindergarten has much more of a closed atmosphere.

We definitely do still intend to be very involved in our son’s school experience wherever we can. My wife has already made certain that the teacher and the parent’s organization are aware that she is available to volunteer as needed and we expect that there will be many opportunities. The class has 24 students and there are no teaching assistants, so the teacher did indicate that parents should have opportunities to stick around and assist in the classroom periodically.

While my work schedule limits my availability, I certainly hope to be able to take part whenever I can as well. I did take the day off of work this week so that I could go along to the parent orientation on Tuesday, which gave me the opportunity to meet his teacher and see the classroom. I expect to attend parent activities and meetings whenever my schedule allows. I also definitely plan to continue to spend lots of time working with my son directly to help reinforce and practice the lessons he is learning in school.

I was impressed by the teacher and the classroom during the orientation on Tuesday. The classroom immediately made a very good first impression due to the teacher’s decision to heavily feature “The Cat in the Hat” as a central theme to the decoration. That was one of the very first books that we bought for my son and we have read it (and its sequels) together numerous times over the years. My son’s reading skills have been improving rapidly and, just last weekend, I helped to guide my son through his first time reading “The Cat in the Hat” himself.

The teacher herself definitely seemed very kind and skilled to me, based on my first impression. She has quite a bit of teaching experience and seemed to have a good handle on how to work with kids this age. After the first 2 days, my son’s impression of her is very positive and he still seems excited about going back again tomorrow.

While it is not always easy to watch my child gain independence and move forward, he is also my greatest pride and the most important part of my wife’s and my lives. I look forward to continuing to share this adventure with my family!

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Fourth of July Memories

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I’ve always really liked the 4th of July, a holiday that has always seemed particularly celebratory while still being generally more casual and lower pressure than most. I’ve always had a bit of a patriotic streak and enjoy the day of paying tribute to the United States. I also have a definite fondness for the marches and other patriotic tunes that dominate the holiday.

For the past several years, my family has been going to Disneyland on the 4th of July to see their special fireworks show. We have learned how best to manage the crowds on that very busy day, making it a pretty easy experience. We also get a hotel room close-by in order to avoid having to deal with the night-time traffic.

When I was growing up, more often than not we spent 4th of July at home instead of trying to go out to see a professional fireworks show or some other public event. Generally, we were pretty satisfied simply enjoying the day at home as a family. This would usually include watching the Boston Pops’ 4th of July concert on TV or other similar patriotic shows. We would often have a BBQ dinner at home. There were a few years that we did go out to municipal fireworks displays, though, so I did at least have that experience a few times as a kid.

The most memorable trip out to see a 4th of July fireworks show was in 1977. That summer, my father had just taken a new job that required our family to move from Florida to Flint, Michigan. For the first couple months, we had to find an alternative place to live while we were waiting for the house my family had purchased to be vacant and ready for us. We had a Starcraft pop-up style camper that we used on vacations, so we spent that time staying at the Holly Hills Campground (based on an online search, I think it is a KOA now) in nearby Holly, which was just a short distance outside of Flint.

On that 4th, we decided to drive into Flint for their big municipal fireworks show downtown, but it ended up being Mother Nature that put on the more memorable performance that night. There was a huge rainstorm and I honestly can’t remember for certain whether or not the fireworks display actually took place, although I think it did. The most memorable part was returning that evening to learn that a tornado had touched down in the campground while we were gone! We were lucky that the actual touchdown (and most of the damage) was on the opposite end from where our campsite was located, which meant that our camper was ok. It was definitely a bit of a fright and still is the closest call with a tornado that I ever experienced.

I don’t remember completely for certain, but I don’t think we ever went out to public events on the 4th of July in any of the other years that we lived in Flint, instead opting for celebration at home. In the late 70s and early 80s, Michigan had pretty loose restrictions on the sale of fireworks for home use, which meant that every supermarket had big display tables with a big selection of firecrackers, sparklers, roman candles, bottle rockets, and other similar items. My parents were appropriately nervous about these types of things, though, and would only allow us to get some sparklers, which we would only use with close supervision.

Many of the neighbors did buy and use the other kinds of home fireworks, which meant that there was always a sort of second-hand display that we were able to watch a bit on the evening of the 4th. On the 5th, the neighborhood streets would be very littered with the spent casings from many of the fireworks and firecrackers that had been set off the night before.

My best friend and I had a tradition, which we obviously never told our parents about (this post may end up as a confession…), walking through the neighborhood on the 5th examining the litter from the night before searching for accidentally discarded fireworks and firecrackers that had not yet been fired. Each year, we found and gathered up quite a bit of stuff that was still live. I remember one year we even found an unexploded cherry bomb, which was a particularly exciting find for a couple pre-teen boys. I don’t remember exactly what we did, but I remember that it was never much of a problem finding a spot outside of eye and earshot of parents in order to light off everything we found.

Regardless of whether I just stayed at home with family or went out to do something special for the holiday, my memories of the 4th of July are pretty much all positive. Here’s hoping for another great 4th of July holiday tomorrow. Happy Birthday, USA!

Posted in 4th of July, Family, Holidays, Personal Stories, Tornado, Weather | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 3 (Age 5)

Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 2 (Age 4)

Memories of My Son’s Birthdays – Part 1 (Ages 1-3)

First Week of Kindergarten

Fourth of July Memories

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