I woke up to Jonathan climbing onto my bed at 7am, snuggling into the crook of my arm and saying, "Mommy, today is your birthday. Are you so excited? You get a birthday hug!" Then he gave me a giant squeeze and began his stream-of-conscious morning ramble on topics ranging from "good airplanes and bad airplanes" to "Quentin L. Cook" to kitchen fires. Love him.
I came downstairs to find a house decorated with birthday banners and my sweet, happy Ben already up with his Nay Nay who'd taken the night shift because she's an angel. We got everyone dressed, and challah french toast with creme anglaise and fresh berries at La Brioche was followed by a trip to a local farm and corn maze.
We went on a hayride, picked a pumpkin, and pumped water. In the barnyard, one of the baby goats escaped from the goat pen, and what followed was pure birthday magic: I caught him! All those hours of chasing a little boy paid off in an unexpected life skill.
That's right--I spent my 27th birthday sunbathing in Thailand, and for my 29th I caught a goat in a barnyard! The satisfaction of actually catching the evasive little bounder combined with the repeated "Mommy you got him!"s amazingly made both activities equally satisfying. I have fully embraced the "when in Rome" philosophy.
My beautiful beads necklace
My loves showered me with a carefully-wrapped macaroni necklace ("beautiful beads" in J's words), dollar-store fuzzy socks, and...
Possibly the greatest gift ever: a Roomba! Or in Jon's words, "Mommy's robot, Gooey."
Gooey vacuums the entire house while I run to Costco or rock babies to sleep. My floors have never looked better because they get vacuumed every day. And Jonathan will tidy up any room for the promise of Gooey "waking up to clean". I marvel each time it finishes a floor of the house, sings a little song, and then scoots on back to mount itself on its charging dock. I seriously love our little Gooey.
Fabio surprised me after dinner with Ella's other-worldly sour cream chocolate cake and coconut almond chocolate chip ice-cream. And that night, as cuddled my boys to sleep, I reflected on my blessings and my goals for the upcoming year while Gooey swept up cake crumbs off the floor.
Yep, 29 was a good birthday.
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