So, Carter is 10! Despite my concerns leading up to this birthday, I think it turned out to be a pretty good one overall, even if there were a couple minor hiccups.
Before I get to his birthday, we had a pleasant Valentine's Day. I wasn't going to do much for it since I was planning on making a really nice dinner, but I panicked at lunch time and ran out on a couple errands to pick up some things. I got Craig a funny Ted Lasso-themed card over the weekend, and ended up supplementing with a couple of his favorite candies. I got Jacob some Ghirardelli chocolates and enlisted Craig's help to get him some Black Forest gummies he likes, and then I got Carter a bag of Kinder Bueno Minis and a bottle of Starry, the new lemon-lime soda that he found out he really likes and wanted at home. Simple but fun. Craig got me roses and a medium-sized Hershey Kiss. I made the boys a dinner of lobster tails, crab legs, cheddar bay biscuits, broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes. The crab legs have a bit of a learning curve to eat and we ended up with a bunch of extras, but overall I think it was a good meal. It was a pretty low-key day otherwise. Carter had woken up with a bit of a lower intestinal problem, but he seemed fine after the one round when he got up, and he didn't want to miss his Valentine's party (which he ended up missing anyway due to his viola lesson), so he went to school with a dose of Imodium just to be safe.
Well, on his birthday I woke up feeling a little off, and sure enough, I had the same problem as him, except mine seemed to go on a bit longer. I had a big event at work so I tried to push through, but even with my own dose of Imodium, I decided around 9:30 that I couldn't risk it. Good thing, too, because I spent most of the morning resting on the couch trying to work through bouts of nausea and a gurgling stomach. I didn't feel super horrible or have severe pain, which was good, but it was enough to make me not want to move for a few hours aside from eating a few pieces of gluten-free toast. I did manage to get Carter a good birthday breakfast before he left--his favorite, egg in a nest. I felt just good enough by lunch to grab him his favorite meal from Wendy's to drop off at school, since he always asks for a special lunch and we hadn't really done that in a while with the pandemic. It used to be more fun when we could stay, but I'm glad he enjoyed it. Craig came home around midday himself because he's had a sinus thing bugging him, and it's his bye week for work so I think he figured he'd give himself a break and rest up. I spent the rest of the day on the basement couch, hiding from 50mph wind gusts, watching an old movie, and eventually eating some leftover white rice (turns out a little spray butter, salt, and cracked black pepper made it pretty darn good). Even though the rice settled okay, I knew I probably couldn't make it through Carter's birthday dinner of choice just yet, and since I had another work event the next day that I couldn't miss, I didn't want to risk getting myself even sicker by overdoing it. So we had his choice of breakfast for dinner (pancake muffins), and I just had an egg, toast, and non-dairy fruit smoothie. No gurgling after that, so I figured I was in the clear, and I was. We did his birthday dinner at Red Robin the next night, and it was so good--he had a big burger (none of that kid stuff anymore, apparently!) and his birthday sundae! I felt bad that it had to wait an extra day, but I don't think he minded spreading it out if it meant I could eat with the rest of the family.
But back to the birthday itself! As I had mentioned, I was nervous about his birthday because we didn't have much on his list. He hadn't been playing much with what he got for Christmas (no surprise) so I wasn't really willing to bring many more toys into the house. But in the end we cobbled together a good batch of gifts, which he opened up when he got home from school.
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| Cool kid! |
One of the things he opened was a replacement "Roboear" Spybot robot for the one he got at Christmas. It quickly started having a very loud hum when you were using the ear piece to listen (it's supposed to let you hear things far away if you leave the robot in that room), and fortunately the company sent me a new one. I wanted to have some extra things for him to open, so I saved it for his birthday! He also opened a Ted Lasso game that he'd been asking for every time we walked through Target. Despite the language on the show (nothing he doesn't really hear elsewhere in life, honestly), we've let him watch it since it's a soccer-themed show, and the game was listed as a family game. It might be fun, and I got it cheap at Walmart at the last minute to bulk things up a little. Next up was the big one, which he guessed what it was between the size and knowing it was one of the few things he asked for!
It was a soccer net! It's a big portable one. It seemed to be the cheapest and easiest to wrangle one I could find. I'm having some second thoughts but more on why in a bit...
Next up was the one true toy I went out on a limb and got. I saw this Roller Coaster Challenge game online somewhere, and it reminded me of a couple other toys he's gotten over the years in that it has a bit of a STEM focus. It has a bunch of cards that tell you how to set up the board and then lists other pieces you need to finish the roller coaster. You have to figure out where to place each piece to connect the start, end, and any starting pieces in between. Then you send a mini roller coaster car down the track. It has a bit of a learning curve but it only took me a few builds to get the hang of it. Carter mostly just wants to build random stuff, but I think he's going to end up frustrating himself trying to do it on his own. I'm trying to convince him to do the ones in the challenges since they have been tested to work, even just for a while to get the hang of it. It's a neat game, though. Here's one of our successes, the first one with a loop.
This was, of course, the season passes I originally meant to give to him at Christmas that got lost in the shuffle, and in the end I'm glad I kept them. I think it really topped off his birthday. He's very excited for us to start our season and get there to ride Ride of Steel!
I had mentioned that there were 50mph winds that day, but I didn't mention that it was also in the upper 60s. How often do you have a February birthday and go out to play without a jacket on your birthday? Almost never. So I sucked it up and collected every bit of energy I could muster to take the soccer net outside, assemble it, and let him play for a few minutes before it got dark. It was a massive pain to put together, especially in the wind. It has two sets of tubes that have an elastic cord stringing them together, and they need to be stuck together. Then you have to thread the net on both pieces and connect them at the bottom corners. It could have been worse, but it was a challenge because it's so big and the pieces tend to disconnect inside the net sleeve. You can put them back together, but it's a lot to wrangle. We'll definitely have to find a way to store it intact all summer. The boys had fun playing, even though it was getting cooler by then and the net was blowing a bit.
And a good move by Carter, too!
I'm really struggling to reconcile the fact that Carter is now in double digits and we have no kids left in single digits. I was looking at pictures of Jacob from when he turned 10, on his second-to-last day of fourth grade, and while in some ways that seems like forever ago (thanks pandemic), I can't get over how much he's changed in those almost five years, which has me a little sad and terrified of how quick that's going to happen to Carter. He's forever my baby boy, and because we're so close right now, I worry about how him growing up will change that. It barely seems possible that those peaceful winter months spent on the couch with a tiny baby in my arms was that long ago now. We've crammed a lot in since then, but ten years is hard to fathom.
Carter's party is still a week away. We were thinking of having it this weekend since Craig was off, but we had some plans that would have made it hard to cram a party (and the prep) in. We were hoping to go to NT on Friday to watch my high school team play, just for a sense of comparison, but then Jacob was going to have late practice which turned into a pre-sectional scrimmage against a team a class down that has a couple players Jacob will be playing with in the spring. Today Carter had a game in the afternoon (another loss...boo) and then we went to the Roberts Wesleyan University game, ironically six years to the day since I went to an amazing concert in that same gym. We had been thinking about going to a game, but once our NT plan collapsed, I checked the schedule and sure enough they were home. Jacob always likes seeing college games and the last star player/three-point shooter at his current school (and the son of the /past coach/athletic director/assistant coach) plays there now. He had a bit of a tough game, but ironically it was a pretty similar scenario to what Jacob is dealing with--a super strong shooter who comes off the bench but barely gets passed to. His dad even admitted it felt awfully familiar--so it's clear he knows the frustration we feel right now. We probably have one more year of this if the current coach doesn't get it in his head that he has a good shooter on his hands next year when our best shooter has graduated, but the old coach is supposedly taking back over after that (his youngest plays and is in Jacob's grade), so Jacob's last three years should, in theory, be better. At least we know he knows how to utilize a shooter.
Tomorrow night we get to make our triumphant return to Strong Museum at the same cool Thrivent event we enjoyed for a few years pre-pandemic, where we go for free and have access to everything without massive crowds. Carter is excited to show us something he discovered on a field trip last year, and I'm intrigued to see some changes since they started expanding a couple years ago. It's still a lot to cram into 2-1/2 hours, but it should be fun. But with all of the plans we had this weekend, cramming in a party seemed unadvisable, so we decided to go with next Sunday. This week is break week, although I can't really take time off. Hopefully I can do at least Friday and give myself some mental space for the party prep, though I have a lot to do to make that happen. Jacob has a sectional game Tuesday, and likely another on Friday. Carter has next weekend off. Time is ticking down toward our busy spring--and still not a snowstorm in sight. Such a weird winter. Anyway, it was a fun birthday for Carter and I'm hoping 10 treats him well!
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