Three!

When, a week ago, I asked Ian what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday it was mainly a rhetorical question. My mother-in-law, Linda, found a wonderful train engine shaped cake pan late last year and I’ve been dying to try it out. So, even if Ian had said he wanted balloons on his cake he’d have received a “woo woo cake”! Thankfully he immediately said “Woo woo pie!”

“Pie? Buddy do you mean cake?”

“Yeah, ca' (pronounced like the letter K)! I ea’, is mm good!”

“What color cake?”

“RED! RED Woo Woo Ca’!”

And that’s what he got: dairy free marble cake shaped and decorated like a red train.

His Daddy bought him two mylar balloons bigger than both boys put together. Ian calls them “kites”. Ian also received many lovely presents which are now scattered all over the house. He loved his tricycle and his cards and his coloring books, but the shirt with a train on it and the train track pieces from Aunt Holly were, predictably, the biggest hit.

Today we went to the doctor for his check up. He weighs 30lbs, still, is 37 inches tall, is still allergic to dairy, and doesn’t like doctors. The little boy who will exclaim “Hi guys!” to complete strangers does not like it when those strangers ask him a lot of questions, poke and pry at him or just generally make him nervous. He shuts down and curls up in my lap. Since he still doesn’t converse well (He typically doesn’t say the last syllable of a word which makes understanding him a bit hard some days.) the pediatrician recommends following up with the speech evaluation.

After the doctor’s visit we went to Fairfax and had lunch with Mark. Ian sat in a booster seat on the bench, ate fries, drank lemonade from a straw and generally looked ever bit the three year old boy. But, then he’d lay his head on his Daddy’s arm and mumble “I miss you Da-Da” and a glimmer of my baby would peek back out.