5

JT turned 5 on Monday. He helped me bake chocolate-chocolate chip cupcakes and wanted light green and orange frosting stars. We were out of cupcake liners and the cupcakes turned out kind of dry and short, but he liked them. We picked up a friend of his from the preschool and I took the two 5 year olds to the free yoga class at the library. On the way home they insisted on telling knock-knock jokes. JT's favorite: knock-knock/ who's there/ mary/ mary who?/ merry christmas! and his friend's: knock-knock/ who's there?/you/ you who?/ you in the bathroom. I'm not quite sure why that was funny, but I am not a 5 year old boy.
We had a little cupcake celebration at our house and the boys played outside until there was a boomerang incident and then a croquet ball was thrown in the air and bounced off the car, towards a window. In the evening we had another cupcake celebration and more presents. He didn't care for the cape I made him (in orange and green) - the neck shouldn't have had velcro and it wasn't long enough, but he did say he would like it if I fixed it. (Sigh...) Mr. Burli's present was much more exciting - 2 hockey sticks for street hockey - painted in orange and green stripes. JT also liked his other presents, and he saved the one from his cousin for last. "It sounds like legos!" It turned out to be Playmobil pirates. Also a hit. He even tested out the boat in the bath.
So, 5. No longer is brown the favorite color. Nor pink. Although today when the store didn't have orange streamers for his party, he said he would take pink instead. No, everything needs to be light green and orange. And the favorite sport was bowling up until a couple days ago. Now it is soccer with hockey a close second.
He still loves trains, but power miners and pirates and dinosaurs are also high on his list. Tonight the train tracks were used to make a 'book club' game where 2 cars named Superwhy and Sarah flew from the book club into a book. (Apparently he spent too much time playing around at pbskids.org today.) He also helped Mr.Burli shred some newspapers for his pinata, but insisted that first they scan the papers for comics. He saw an editorial cartoon with Barack Obama, as he pointed out. How did he know? "He has big ears and a tall head." Well, duh.
He is also very excited about going to school, although taking him out of preschool is confusing because he seems to think that he will be going to Kindergarten any day now. He wants to do experiments and learn things, he claims. We visited a magnet school fair run by the school district the other day, and he said he wanted to go to 3 of the schools - all had pictures of kids doing fun things. (I was less impressed with the technology elementary which claimed 'all kids learn to use word by 6th grade.' ?!)
JT also told me that he doesn't like me for the first time the other day. I was a strict mom and said that he couldn't have ice cream since I warned him not to ... whatever it was, I seem to have forgotten... but in any case, he understood and blew his chance. He said he liked me again that evening. Thank goodness!