The Morning of Doug's Birthday(July 10, 2009)

Doug has no concept of the passing of time. Days of the week are still a gray area for him and the concepts of weeks, months, days are all rather nebulous for him. He tried keeping a countdown to his birthday, but did not have a good grasp at all. Four days before his birthday, he was confusing four days with four weeks. Then three days before his birthday, he kept getting mixed up and declaring it was just "two weeks away". We went over and over and over how many days away it was and what day of the week it would fall on in relation to the current day of the week, but with limited success. On Wednesday morning, as I was getting ready for work, Doug slipped out of bed all excited and exclaimed to me in an eager whisper, "ONE MORE DAY until my birthday!!!" I corrected him, "No, Doug...it is TWO more days until your birthday." His face clouded over, he spun on his heels and disappearing into his bedroom, he shut his door rather forcefully. Doug is NOT one to react in anger. I was shocked. I went to his room and found him hiding behind his bed, face turned away from me. I turned him around and saw angry tears welling up in his eyes. In his mind, I was changing the rules...making him wait LONGER for his birthday than he was suppose to have to wait!...increasing the days until it came. I talked it over with him and gently explained to him, holding up fingers to help him do the math, that yesterday it had been THREE days until his birthday, so today it was TWO days until his birthday. His little stiff shoulders relaxed and the anger melted away.


First thing the morning of his birthday, Doug opened some of his presents (with help from his sisters)! He had been asking to do this for EONS!!! And he had been SO EXCITED about his upcoming birthday that he was still wide awake four hours after being put in bed the night before! (Notice the Christmas wrap--that is called "disorganized mother who forgot to pick up birthday wrap the day before"!)

Then, at 1:00, Doug's two friends Jacob and Shawn arrived for his birthday sleepover. Originally, I had planned to take the boys to the lake to swim, but the afternoon turned out overcast with sprinkles, so, I changed my mind. However, within twenty minutes of the boys' arrival, I changed my mind again!!! Last year, this same group of boys together had been amazingly, impressively low impact, low maintainence...a perfect joy to have around. When what I had been BRACING for was pure pandemonium. THIS year, I was EXPECTING a repeat of last year, but, instead got pure pandemonium! I have to admit, that the problems seemed to all have a common denominator though...MY DAUGHTERS!!! Yup, within minutes of the boys' arrival, Rayna, in a huff, stormed out of Doug's room, where the three boys were playing, and SLAMMED his door, causing his framed Narnia picture to fall off the wall and the glass shattered into a billion pieces everywhere. I shooed all the boys out of Doug's room and quickly set to work sweeping up the millions of shards. As I passed down the hall with my FIRST dustpan full of glass shards, I was shocked to see my bathroom and family room floors had been destroyed--worse than I have ever seen them look in the two years we have lived here. All five kids were squeezed into the main bathroom where oldest daughter, Darcy was helpfully filling up water guns for everyone. The problem was she was spraying each child thoroughly before giving them their gun. The bathroom floor was drenched...meanwhile, three boys with very dusty, dirty tennis shoes were milling around, covering the bathroom floor with mud. Obviously, some of them had already made at least one trip outdoors and had come back into the bathroom again for another refill, because the family room was also COVERED with a mass of muddy tracks. It was at that very moment (less than 20 minutes after the boys' arrival) that I had an epiphany....going to the lake (a 35 minute drive away) was a WONDERFUL idea, EVEN IF IT STORMED CATS AND DOGS. If it stormed, we would just turn around and come back home again....still using up the SEVENTY minutes of DRIVE TIME with all five children SEAT-BELTED in place OUT OF MY HOUSE!!! It was a win/win proposition!!!

And, so, I announced we were reverting to our ORIGINAL plan and going to the lake and directed everyone to get changed for the lake and hopefully swimming!