Lucas Turns 8!

Happy 8th Birthday, Lucas!

It's all I can do to stop myself from starting every birthday post with "Wow!"  But I feel amazed that I am old enough to have an 8 year old.  =)  But the really amazing thing is Lucas.

"Lucas, we are so excited to be HERE in your LIFE!  Watching you grow is a pleasure, although we sometimes feel ill equipped to parent like you deserve.  Your manners and creativity are so fun!  Your lawyer-like penchant for chat is challenging, but often quite funny!  And you look so handsome.  Your adult self is showing a little more every day and it's wonderful to see you think, grow and learn."

So this year, Lucas invited the Dalrymples over for his birthday lunch and he had a Magic Treehouse cake.  It was so cute!  Our oven went on the blink, and so a friend recommended her friend as a good source for cakes.  She did a great job!

Lucas chose his birthday fare: grilled steak, watermelon and blueberries, rolls and orange spinach salad with honey lemon yoghurt dressing(a fave!).  

We had a lame-o scavenger hunt planned that was going to be REALLY BAD.  But Carrie saved the day with her creative clues based off some of the first 8 books in the MT series.  Whew!  Snickers in the bathtub? "Find this treasure where a pirate would wash his booty!" And the like.  The kids talked about it for the next week, which was cute, but made me feel bad at the same time that this was the first time I'd ever set up a scavenger hunt for them.

This year, Papa planted a very cool idea in Lucas' head.  "Son!  How about a nice, expensive Lego Mindstorms NXT!  Check this out on the internet, blah, blah, blah!"  So guess what I heard about up until a few days before the birthday?  "We can't spend that kind of money!  What a huge sum! Gifts should be capped at $X! We don't want our kids to have high expectations and be greedy!"  And the like.  Oh well!  Off we went to get the gift.  Except, oh no!  Sold out of all stores.  Not available online. Not available til JULY.  Shane scavenged one off of ebay and so it was only a few days late.  So one of the gifts for Lucas' birthday was a cardboard tube with a picture of the Mindstorm on it.  =)  His grandparents (both sides) exploded his birthday with multiple awesome gifts of the r/c nature and a huge box of insect books complete with light and sound, plastic bugs, bookmarks, snakes and alligators, stickers and candy and birthday money.

He's a lucky duck! Quack.

So his day went well, he successfully turned 8 and I have another gray hair.

Funny story, just the other day I was asking Lucas if he noticed all my gray hair in the front.  He looks. Nope!  No gray hair, Mom!  I looked in the mirror and was like, gee!  There are TWENTY all in the front, surely you can see this!  No dice, Lucas can't see the gray.  So I press him and he finally says that yes, he can see the gray hair, but he doesn't want to hurt my feelings and make me feel bad about getting old.  Awww.  And I realized something else.  While that was very sweet of him, I shouldn't put that kind of pressure on him, either.  I told him that I LOVED getting old!  It meant I was a mommy and that I really hoped to be a grandma someday, too.  And I reassured him that if I was getting old all by myself while everyone else stayed young, I might be upset.  But getting old is normal and is supposed to happen to us all and we are lucky if it does. 

Sometimes I realize I am accidentally sowing seeds that I don't want growing, seeds of denial and discontent with aging.  But every birthday should be celebrated with joy and I (once again!) need to be the example of what it looks like to love living if I want my children to do the same.