Our littlest Little just had a birthday. It’s hard to believe that two years have gone by since the whirlwind weekend when he arrived. But my nursing babe is a babe no more. (Though he is still nursing.)
We’ve been trying to reduce the amount of Things in our home lately (seems like we’ve been working on it for a year), so this birthday created a bit of a dilemma for us. Do we purchase cheap toys that he doesn’t need and won’t play with for long? That’s an easy one. No. Do we purchase more expensive but classic toys that really engage his imagination but that we just don’t have room for right now? A much more difficult question to answer. The original answer was yes, just one little thing. But the day that I tried to go to the Bella Luna shop in Rockland because I was in the area, I found a note on the door saying they needed to close early. So we needed to do some rethinking. And the final answer is one that all our children still living at home are embracing. We aren’t giving birthday “gifts” any more. From this birthday on (with a few exceptions here and there, since rules are made to be broken, after all) we’re going on birthday excursions.
Silas is a little too young to choose his place, so we chose for him. One of our favorite places to visit is a not too far away orchard, complete with ice cream, apple picking, goat petting and feeding, and a hay ride. We skipped the corn maze on this day since the day was about Silas and we didn’t want to wear him out. But oh, did he enjoy his ice cream. And petting and watching the goats, especially one of the little ones who was nursing. And going on a hay ride, pulled by one of his very favorite things – a big tractor. And being pulled in the wagon. (Which he was very reluctant to leave behind and tried to push it to the van for us to bring home.) And of course we picked a few bags of apples to enjoy. It was a very good day, indeed. Happy Birthday, Little Man!