Griffin is 4 years old!

I have a 4, 6 and 7 year old now – no more toddlers. Things have been hectic – I know I am 6 days late on the birthday posting!

Yes, he is now 4.  But, the question remains, is he officially not a toddler if he isn’t potty trained?  For the past few months he has been insisting that he would be trained when he was 4.  True to his word, he hasn’t had an accident in six days (unless you count peeing in his bed once at night, which Zander also does occasionally, so we won’t count it).  He had a pretty typical birthday, I suppose.  Daddie brought him out for a special run in the stroller and they came home with some chocolates from the bakery for breakfast. He went to school wearing his crown and with his gluten free cake in hand.  Also, we made candy bags for each of his classmates as favors – featuring some of his French favorites…. fraise tagada (red sugar coated marshmallows), smarties (mini m&m’s) and fruits (kind of like softer starbursts) with pink and yellow ribbon ties. Here is a shot of the shots they took of him, enjoying his cake in class.

André came home for lunch for the big day.  Since Daddie needed to work late for some meetings, he wasn’t going to be able to make it for dinner so we had a birthday lunch. The kids picked up these trimmed off forsythia branches on the walk home to help decorate the table.  Griffin requested scrambled eggs – which Zander wanted to make (he is quite the budding chef).  He cracked the eggs and mixed them up great but accidentally bumped his hand on the hot pan while in the midst of pouring the mixture into the frying pain.  This resulted in him dumping the entire bowl of eggs all over the stove.  To say this made him upset is like calling Mount Everest a small hill.  He literally threw himself down on the ground wailing as if the world was about to end.  He wouldn’t let me look at his hand, he wouldn’t talk to me etc.. This type of wailing occurs regularly from him, but it threw me off because, for once, it wasn’t because I was being ‘mean’ or Callie was bothering him or he didn’t want to go to school etc… etc… etc… it was because he was truly devastated to have ruined Griffin’s birthday eggs.  He kept saying, “I didn’t mean to do it” and “This has never happened to me before” He can be a bit hard on himself, that’s for sure.

Luckily, I had bought extra eggs since we were going to dye some for Easter and we were able to salvage lunch.  For dessert we had more chocolate cake (that’s right – it is about noon and he has already had chocolates for breakfast, chocolate cake at school and now another chocolate cake for after lunch – I spent a lot of time this week baking).  He was very happy to have the chance to have both French and English happy birthday songs sung to him. 

After lunch we opened presents.  He got an elaborately drawn road from Zander, some cars from Callie, a pegboard set from me and André and TONS of stuff from the wonderful Grammie (cars, train book with stickers, buses, animal stickers and car stickers) Are you getting an idea of what he likes? Here are some shots of him opening gifts. The sticker book was probably his favorite – he has already spent hours sticking stickers from it on paper (all on top of each other – which drives me crazy – but hey, it’s his stickers) and his big brother is also in love with this book – he’s hoping for one as well (though I think he is mostly just jealous)

 

In the afternoon, he had his tutoring with Cecile and played on the best 5 Euro toy I’ve ever gotten at a thrift store –his little car.  He LOVES this thing and literally will spend an hour or more just riding around on it. I finished preparing the requested Grandpa mashed potatoes and decided that, since it was his birthday, I would come outside and try to play with him instead of calling him in right away, etc…  Well, he didn’t want, or need me – he was in bliss riding around and around.  I took some shots of the no longer 3 year old man in training…. as you can see he is strong, fast, humorous and mixes well with all types of folks – let’s hope these qualities keep on developing as he grows up!

     

Happy Birthday Griffin!