larry's birthday

today is larry's birthday. eva helped me bake a cake for larry, and unlike my usual version of letting her help but still being a bit too controlling regarding the end product, i actually let her help. she stuck her hands into the sifted flour, sugar ended up on the floor. crumbs got mixed into the whipped cream, and the strawberries were smooshed right in rather than being arranged on top. and guess what? it's just fine. (i'm not saying i'm terrible about this, but i do catch myself at times and wonder... why not just let her do it? just let go...)

we followed the precedent set on my birthday and i took eva to roam target to find her gift for papa. she'd been saying all week she wanted to get him "that big bag she saw" so he can carry lots of stuff in it. i still don't know what bag she was thinking of, but we found a canvas messenger bag for him, and she said that was the one she wanted for him. in the bag went a summer shirt (eva chose the white one over the brown i had in mind, which turns out to have been the better choice) and a wii game where you swim around under the ocean, which i think eva will also enjoy. she then had the idea of buying him flowers -- pink tulips, specifically -- and choose a card with the whole alphabet on it (wow, was she excited to find that).

after cake (sure, why not before dinner?) we all went out for a leisurely dinner that wrapped up at 9. she was so cooperative both at target (roaming free out of the cart, because she insisted she would "cooperate and be patient") and at dinner, where we waited 40 minutes because we were set on the idea of sitting outside. for the last couple weeks of my, um, confinement, she understandably became quite difficult -- contrary about everything, having massive meltdowns whenever we returned home from somewhere -- because she was so fed up with being at home and with my being prone on the couch. i kept hearing how normal that was for her age, which it is, but i knew the suddenness of the onset when i got sick couldn't be entirely explained away as a phase. now that i'm better (mostly; enough so that i have more-or-less resumed my usual sort of activities -- like getting groceries or going to the park), she is much happier and by extension easier to deal with. sure, she still is contrary -- she is two after all -- but she no longer tells me on a daily basis how sad she is because she doesn't have any friends to play with. we'll consider it a practice run for the confinement that naturally occurs after a baby is born... in a weird way, i think it will give me strength knowing that it won't last forever. she went through a lot these past two months, and as hard as it was on all of us, she's amazingly resillient.



this feels totally disjointed, but these days my brain shuts off sometime around 9 p.m., so i think that's the best i can do. man, i'm really pregnant... (when did that happen? i swear, last time i checked i was like 4 months along, and now i'm having a baby in a month and change. wow.)