Due to the (unsurprising) mental blank that occurred to Aunt Nina at the grocery store, there were no birthday candles. So Paula improvised with some household candles...luckily, there were 5 of them. Levi didn't seem to care--he was just eager to get past the singing and all so he could get his hands on Ironman.
Or should I say his hands and his tongue! To his credit, he began by politely wiping the icing off with his fingers...I'm the one that egged him on to lick the icing off.
Caleb very animatedly telling one of his stories. Don't remember what it was about, but he was waving his spoon to punctuate his point.
Ironman took the opportunity to partake of the cake and ice cream....
before it was time for him to transform into airplane form. WHO KNEW that was going to be so hard to figure out!? The direction sheet showed how to transform the figure from a plan to Ironman, but not the reverse, so I started at the last step and tried to reverse engineer the process. After getting a few parts folded or twisted into place, I was totally stymied and gave up. This is guy stuff, so I sent him to Papa. I think the look on my Dad's face says it all:
(He was probably thinking, "Back in my day we whittled toy guns out of sticks. Much simpler!)
Then my sister took a turn. Come to find out, she opened the package and transformed the plane to Ironman so he could go on the cake. Having already fiddled with it once, and with the vast experience she's gained due to 3 boys and 6 years experience dealing with these types of toys, I thought she'd have it in mere minutes.
Not so much.
Little Bit wanted to go out of doors, and frankly, needed the outlet, so I took him outside. His abso-most-favorite thing in the whole world right now is his phone. Or any phone he can lay his little paws on. But the current yellow plastic one, rarely, if ever, leaves his hand.
When we came back inside, I am sorry to report that Ironman was STILL in superfigure, not plane, form. I had been outside with Ian for at least 20-30 minutes, and at this point the toy had been handled by me, Paula, and Dad. Three adults had been unable to successfully figure it out! Now Caleb had jumped in and was trying to do it. [The irony of this, to me, is that in another 24 hours or so Levi will probably have it down pat and be able to make his Ironman figure alternate between superdude and plane in seconds, like an army recruit trained to break down and reassemble an AK-47.]
We went ahead with the other gifts. Mom and I suppressed a groan at the realization that THEIR gift was yet another toy that transforms, a Star Wars figure that alternates between Emperial fighter and Darth Vader.
He also got a dinosaur puppet, technically from Aunt Nina but courtesy of my friend Dana, who gave me several bags of things for Paula and the boys. I set the dino aside to be a present.
It didn't take long for an epic battle to occur between the latest additons to the boy universe. Kinda like Mothra versus Ironman.
It wasn't pretty.
There's a tree between Paula's yard and her neighbor's that is bending over from the weight of all the apples on it's branches. They're tart, crisp, really good apples, so we went out there and filled up a few bags.
And Ian "helped," of course, ever present phone in hand. That involved throwing the blemish-free apples on the ground with the bad ones as soon as we picked them, giving his Grammy a heart attack by falling off the ladder, and repeatedly stretching for the ones completely beyond his reach. But then he carried the bag over his shoulder like a trouper, and it was SO cute. It was a good day.
