He expressed a great deal of opposition to having a birthday. He didn't want a party. He wanted to stay 3. He also spent Sunday and Monday having ideas of things he wanted to do, then just getting inconsolably upset about things I didn't understand, and telling me that I had ruined his day or ruined his birthday.
Monday he woke up and said, "I just want you to go pick up my cake for me." Of all the reasons I booked a party at Chuck E. Cheese, the grocery-store cake was not among the most important.
He agreed to go, and was ready to leave the house by 9 AM. We were supposed to be there at 10:45 to set up for the 11 o'clock party. Finally, at about 9:45, we went ahead and took off. I drove slowly (don't laugh; I actually set my cruise control for 5 under the speed limit), got gas, and we stopped by the Salvation Army store to kill 15 minutes or so.
The party ended up being a lot of fun. Mal loved it, loved having his friends there, and, of course, loved the cake. And pizza. Between birthday extras and people just handing their tickets over to him, Mal ended up with something like 2700 tickets, easily a record for us. However, he seemed unimpressed with the bigger offerings newly-available to him. He ended up walking out with 4 gummy Ring Pops and a bunch of points for later.
Just so I'll remember (because I have pictures of D's 5th birthday that include a little girl of whom I have zero recollection), Harrison, Alexei and his sister Anya, Blake and her brother Canyon, and Loki and his brother Zephyr came to Mal's party, plus Nana and Pappy and everyone's designated adult.
We finally gave Mal the LandSpeeder we bought him at 75 percent off when Toys R Us was closing. It took two days, but Mal finally sat in it and pressed buttons. He still won't drive it. He's waiting for Harrison to come over and drive it, and he says he'll sit beside Harrison.
The first thing Mal said to me on Tuesday was, "See? I woke up and I didn't turn 4." I had to break it to him that he was fully four on that day, though he'd gotten a reprieve during his actual party because he'd been born 19 minutes after his party officially ended.
The rest of the day and most of today has been much easier, emotionally-speaking. Mal wanted to go back to Chuck E. Cheese today, and because of a card we got for booking online and some left-over plays Pappy gave us, we were able to play for an hour with nothing out of pocket.
So... this time last year, Mal was finally ready to start using a toilet. Six weeks before his 3rd birthday, I thought we were still months and months away from it, but he was out of diapers during the day at his party. Since May of this year, we've had some regressions with his willingness to go when he needs to defecate, and I'd blame the switch from the training toilets to the big ones, but it wasn't a direct correlation.
However, a couple of times this week, he's just gone without my knowing (rather than my reading his face and ordering him to go NOW) and has called me in to help him finish.
Another cool thing is that he's been mostly dry overnight for a few months. I wasn't super committed to getting rid of the nighttime Pull-Ups just because I don't love taking the bedding off in the middle of the night, and I knew we definitely wanted to do Pull-Ups on vacation, using a bed that doesn't have waterproof covering. He was only wet twice during that 9-night stay, and has only been wet once in the 9 nights since we returned. The night before last, I let him go to sleep without a diaper on, but chickened out in the middle of the night. Last night, no Pull-Up and he was dry.
The cool thing is that, during the past week or so, he's been receptive to my encouragement to use the restroom before we go somewhere and, especially, before we go to bed. That's a huge change, and I'm loving it.
So he's growing up a lot, but also resisting growing up. He's a super fun kid, and spending time with him is an unmitigated blessing. Here's to Year Five!
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