Happy Birthday

Yesterday DS1 turned 4!

The day started with a huge, but brief, hail storm. DSs slept right through it. I picked up some hailstones to save and found many about golf ball size, and several almost tennis ball size. One was broken in half and I could see the layers of how it grew from pea size to much larger. Very cool.

When DS1 awoke, I showed him the front yard and we talked about hail a little. Then he opened his two presents, a Dora DVD and some magnetic alphabet blocks.

When opening the car to go to daycare & work, I couldn't figure out why there were hailstones in the front seat. I was sure I hadn't left a window open. Then I noticed the back window out and glass all over the car seats. What a mess! I sent the boys back inside, told DH we were all going to go together, asked him to call daycare and our workplaces, and started removing the carseats and shaking the glass out of them. Fortunately it had stopped raining. However, by the time I was ready to get the boys in the other car it had started raining again, so my head and jacket got pretty drenched getting the boys into the car. I had them sit on towels, but their pants got wet anyway. It's a good thing daycare has spare clothes for them.

Drop-off at daycare went badly, for the 5th day in a row. I have no idea why DS1 seems happy to get ready for daycare, goes inside the building okay, but then won't enter his room. Last week I thought it was because they were focusing on the circus for a field trip on Friday, but with it continuing this week I am baffled.

I called his teacher around 10 and she said he calmed down fairly quickly and had been fine every since. We brought treats (frosted cookies) for his class and some Amish Friendship Bread for the staff. His class sang Happy Birthday to him and he got a candle in his cookie.

When we got home, we asked DS1 where he wanted to eat dinner. He said he wanted to stay home "where it was safe from the hailstorm".

He didn't want a cake or cupcakes, just ice cream. That's practically all he ate for dinner, but that was okay with me. (Not quite as okay with DH, but I'm working on him.) Later in the evening we spent some time in the basement because our county was under a tornado watch. We had more heavy rain and very small hail. DS1 spent the time in the basement making words on the clothes dryer with his alphabet letters. Some of the were: CAT, BOY, ELEFANT, and several non-standard words like EUQLT, ZTORA, and CELEFANT (with a hard c). I told him about P H making the /F/ sound, but he wanted to stick with F in ELEFANT.

Overall, it was a memorable day. Not at all like we adults expected, but memorable none-the-less.

Clipping fingernails

DS1 trimmed his own fingernails this evening. He did a pretty good job and only asked me to help once. I was really impressed. He did say, "ouch," once, but it must not have been too bad because I didn't see blood on any of his fingers when he showed them to me when he finished.

Drive Time

The past 2 mornings on the way to daycare, DS1 has had some interesting things to say. Yesterday we took turns saying rhymes. He would say a word, then I said one that rhymed with it. Then I would say a word, and he would say a rhyme. This morning he told me a story about a witch who took her magic wand and changed the weather of the seasons. The people in his story didn't like it.