A Birthday Interlude

That's my little cutie :) He turns 7 today. He is a bundle of energy, and has been from the start. I'm glad he was number 2, because, as great and sweet as he is, I probably wouldn't have had another one after him. Sr. Jr. was a relatively easy baby, who took regular naps and would eat whatever was put in front of him. Not this one. I finally gave up on trying to get him to take naps when he was a year old. Not that he took naps before then, just that I tried hard to get him to take them. It was a very painful process and always ended in failure. Finally I gave up and decided that if he wanted to stay up all afternoon and be cranky and miserable in the evening, he could. Only it didn't work out that way (thank goodness!). He stayed awake all afternoon without getting cranky in the least. It was some small measure of consolation that if my baby/toddler wasn't going to take naps, at least he'd be sweet and funny while doing it. In fact, I used to have to take him and Sr. Jr. out into the backyard to have running races in order to tire him out to go to bed at night! So, while *I* needed him to take naps for my sanity and for any hope of getting anything done, he felt differently.

He also doesn't really eat anything. Sometimes I think he subsists via photosynthesis.

He is whip-smart, not in the "look at me! look how smart I am!" way of his older brother, but in his own quiet way. When he was 3 1/2, and his friends were learning how to say the alphabet, he was reciting it to me backwards. In kindergarten last year, his mind would wander during circle time, so he ended up memorizing all the state capitals. We discovered this while at lunch with some friends one afternoon. Sr. Jr. and his friend quizzed him over and over, amazed that this little wisp of a kid knew so much. (We won't discuss the time Jr. Jr. showed up Sr. Jr. when learning how to count to 10 in Spanish.)

Jr. Jr. is a sweetheart, too. Maybe it's a younger sibling thing, but he always thinks of other people. When I asked him what kind of cupcakes he wanted me to make for his birthday celebration at school today, he said, "I want chocolate, but Will doesn't like chocolate, so make sure you have at least one vanilla one for him." (I bought the vanilla ones. I'm not that much of a domestic diva.)

One of the best things about my little guy is how funny he is. The funniest things come out of his mouth almost effortlessly. I don't mean the same, tired old jokes that every mom for generations has had to find completely hysterical, but things that are unique to him. One time he came out with "that's sillier than a ball of earwax!" It's become a family saying. The picture above was taken over the summer during our vacation in Yosemite National Park (the Mist Trail, to be really specific). On one of our other hikes, we were talking about how beautiful it was to be out there, but we really didn't want to run into any bears, because bears were dangerous. "It's just Nature's way of saying 'I hate you!'" he explained.

He can shake his booty better than anyone I've ever seen. He'll throw in "I'm sexy. Uh, huh. Oh yeah, I'm sexy" just to make it even more funny.

He's cute, he knows it, and he knows how to work it. He can bat his eyelashes with the best of them. Sometimes it's very hard to be stern with him when he's done something wrong, because he's so darn cute. Other times, it's quite frustrating when you want him to take something seriously and he's trying to be cute.

Happy birthday kid!