Thane's 4!

After weeks of “I can’t have a birthday” and “I can’t have four,” Thane celebrated his birthday pretty happily, despite his birthday being postponed on account of snow.

The big surprise for our family was that Thane decided to join us at the table and frost his own cake. I have some shaky video of his first lick of frosting, and the way he cringed and said “No way!” when we asked if it was good. I thought he might lose it, but he is gaining so much control of hi s gag reflex.



He really enjoyed blowing out the candles. In fact, we had to light them a couple of times so he could do it more than once.




He also enjoyed opening his presents. The biggest hit was the Pat Pat Rocket that Karen and Wayne managed to get for us while they were in stock at a Target in Biddeford. Of course, it is easy for me to say it was worth the effort because I didn’t do the work! Seriously, though, Thane really loves it and Karen tested it for lead before she mailed it. If you look at the picture, which also shows one of his new horses, he is actually moving a character up the stairs into Rocket. It may not seem like much, but it actually shows something pretty major a little guy on the autism spectrum!


My biggest laugh comes from my warped sense of humor. Dave didn’t put S’Mores together beforehand, so check him out screwing in the batteries. This wins for my obscene toy photo of the year. When Braeden was in Montessori, we were doing a 4th of July Parade and Dave was inflating Uncle Sam. The air inlet was . . . guess where?


And, in case that photo of Dave wasn’t silly enough, check him and Braeden (and Dora) out wearing mini Bilibos.


Last is a not so great photograph of Thane’s cake at his birthday party. The back story on the cake is that I finished baking it and let it cool on a rack – first getting a nice grid pattern in the top of one half of the cake. I figured that would be the bottom. I put the cake on a pan and started frosting it. It seemed to be going well until I put the top layer on. As I was frosting it I realized that it was really rather lopsided. I am not sure how it happened, but I was grumbling in my mind about my ugly cake. Thane walks in and in his charming and very breathy way said, “Wow! It’s perfect!”

After I started writing on it, Braeden decided he wanted to come in and help. His initial idea was to use white to make a symbol that it wasn’t for children under three. He decided instead to go around it. Thane came in and decided he wanted to do the red. In fact, he wanted to use all the red. I figured I should let it all go . . . besides, who would notice the fact that the cake is lopsided when it had kid graffiti all over it?!? They were happy! And everyone enjoyed eating it . . . other than Thane.


Another amazing thing to see is that the boy next to Thane with the blower is six months older. At one point he was close to six inches taller than Thane and 15 pounds heavier. Nothing makes it more obvious that Thane is no longer Failure to Thrive than seeing him next to a peer! He sure has changed a lot in so many ways!

All right, I have one more. The dog just looks cute under the tree.