Happy 8th Birthday, Philip!

 So today Philip turned 8.

We started the day with coffee and dippy eggs.  Then he watched Portal videos on YouTube while I baked his birthday cakes.   

He's been obsessed with Portal for about a month. 

 Let me back that up -   for   m o n t h s   he's been watching Portal videos.  I don't even know how he first discovered them, but he found some really dark cool videos with a lot of robots singing parodies of well-known songs - Making Christmas,  This Is Halloween, The Sound of Silence, etc.  Then he started asking me about Portal and how we could get it and how he could play it and if I thought he'd be old enough to do it.  My knowledge of Portal encompasses less than a half of a percent of all Portal knowledge, but you know who does know?  CJ.

Not only did CJ know, but he also owned both games, so about a month ago (maybe?) I installed Portal 1, and he was off and running.  Philip was able to beat the game in about a week, with the help of a few video walkthroughs.  Then we installed Portal 2 to a similar outcome.

We had the idea to make him a Portal birthday cake.  These were a few possibilities:

I thought the third was the way to go, but I hate fondant.  It would have to be iced.  

Luckily, I know somebody who is really good at such things.

She used her expertise to assemble and frost the cake to smooth perfection.

Then I freehanded the decoration.

After that, it was time to design and execute the treasure hunt.  Regina gets credit for this idea.  She came up with a list of hiding places, and together we  thought of clues, with help from the interwebs.

Our objective was a hunt that wouldn't be over in 4 minutes; one that had some satisfying problems to solve.  He had the most trouble with clue #2, since it involved an old-school push button phone with letters on the keypad.  I thought it would be fairly obvious.

To be fair, it also took Natalie several minutes and a few hints to figure it out.

I thought he'd have more trouble with the Morse code, but he was all over that one, especially since unbeknownst to me, Dad had given him an introduction to Morse a few days earlier.

He has the worst posture.

He wanted meat lover's pizza for birthday dinner, so that was no sweat for me.  Mam came up to eat with us, and we had cake and presents afterward.

Birthday presents were : a heat activated Pac-Man mug, some Minecraft Dungeons boxers, a light-up diamond sword from Tess, some really awesome Minecraft sneakers (Mam), and a Lego Minecraft set that has been on his wish list since Christmas (also Mam).  

After dinner, Philip and Natalie went off to make some progress on the Lego set.  Andy, Theresa, and I finished watching a movie (Knives Out), and then Philip watched Noelle play Portal until it was time for bed.  

Happy birthday to our funny, smart, silly, clever, twisted little boy!

Y tho?

Reading Lessons With Phil.

Okay, so today I thought it might be helpful and fun if we built a little Lego car and said each letter as we drove past. It degenerated quickly.

This is exhausting.

Side note: His exposure to Mark Rober's videos is obvious. He read the word "Mass" and I asked him what it meant, to be sure he knew what he was reading. I thought he might refer to Holy Mass at church.

His response? "Mass! Like center of mass? Your butt is your center of mass," and then proceeded to demonstrate what happens when your center of mass isn't centered. There was a lot of falling involved.

6 years old.

Oh, but I do love this boy. 

Trouble - With A Capital P.

You read about the Tree-Climbing Incident.

Well, it's not just trees.

He'll climb anything.  He loves to climb up along the outside of the staircase and pretend he's "fixing" the ceiling with his toy tools.

He recently discovered (through observation) that Regina's closet can be scaled.  Now he climbs up to that shelf and throws all the stuff down to the floor whenever we forget to latch the door.

Notice how they threw down all those dresses to make room for their acrobatics.

Playground Fun.

Today was such a beautiful spring-like day that we cut the schoolwork short and went out to enjoy it!    I even saw numerous large flocks of geese heading north again!

Gina (5) being pretty.

Gina being normal.

Philip (2) absolutely loved his first ride on the seesaw.

Course Mom had to do all the pushing, or else he'd be stuck 5 feet off the ground.

Noelle (top) and Natalie, 9 yrs old.

What happens when I ask Clare to watch Philip....

Two Pictures from Wednesday.

Our tomato harvest from the past few days.

A whole playground to explore, and Philip would rather sit on the bench and draw with a marker.

Tub Time.

Blankie.

Sarah had Fluffy Blanket, but there hasn't been another kid with a favorite blanket since then.  

Until Phil.

Blankie has a backstory.  

In 2009,  Scott had a car accident in which the car was seriously injured and thankfully, he was not.  He still won a trip to the hospital in an ambulance, and the ambulance crew had to cut his jeans off him, so he arrived at the hospital (and came home) covered by a loosely-woven hospital blanket stained with his own blood.

Flash-forward to 2013 - Philip is born in August, and during a shopping trip in those early months, in the baby department at Target, I saw a gauze baby blanket for upwards of $20.  $20 FOR GAUZE!!!  It doesn't even keep a baby warm, but it's supposed to reduce the risk of suffocation.

I remembered that blood-stained blanket that I'd been hanging onto, and thought I could do something with it.  I cut out the stains to make it into a large rectangle, and sewed a blue satin  border around the edge with pastel rainbow thread.

This was taken December 2013, when he was 3 months old.

I don't remember exactly how old he was when we realized that he was grabbing for it eagerly at  naptime or bedtime, but it was definitely a faithful companion by the time he was crawling.  It was when he started to walk, however, that Blankie became a liability.  He tried to toddle around with Blankie dragging under his feet, tripping him up. 

By that time, he had become so attached to it that I was fearful we'd lose it somewhere and he'd be inconsolable.  It was then that I sub-divided Blankie into one large, one medium, and three "Traveling Buddies."

Philip, 11 months, and a Traveling Buddy on the return trip from Illinois last July.

Sometimes we can find all five, sometimes only two or three.  One Traveling Buddy is permanently stationed in his car seat, and he knows that "Big Blankie" lives in the "kib." (crib)  The rest are dragged (and lost) everywhere on a daily basis.  He even came proudly into the kitchen today, pushing a doll stroller with Blankie in the seat, exclaiming, "Blankie - roller!"

July 2015, 23 months old

Like Father, Like Son.

Sunday morning, Philip decided to get up and play at 3:00 a.m., so when the sun finally caught up with him, none of us were anywhere near ready to face the day.  

Strollin' with Phil.

It's about time to update the photo on the wall, and get a nice shot for his birthday.  He's hard to pin down for a good picture.  This was my try for today.

Resourcefulness. Before and After.

Two pictures to demonstrate Phil's resourcefulness. He's trying everything he can to figure out how to get to his precious "OUTSIDE" by himself. Today's attempt:

And here's his gleefully triumphant face after he succeeded:

I can see my next project is to reupholster that chair. :/