Dragon's Birthday

We went to a St. Patrick's Day parade in Greenwich yesterday, at which I bought Jack a giant Dragon-shaped balloon/beach ball type of thing. Jack grew immediately attached to it and wanted to use it as a sleeping toy (Um, no), bring it to school in the car (no), have a picture taken with it (yes) and printed out on our color printer (sigh...yes).

And of course, when he got home from school today, it was Dragon's Birthday and he had to have a party for him.

First, he made a birthday card for dragon. "How do you spell birthday?" "D..A...Y...How do you spell dragon?"

He got Kate interested in the proceedings and they gathered things up for the party. Together, while I made dinner, they made four or five trips upstairs, setting up the party. He gave me updates: "There are games at Dragon's party.....Dragon is staying downstairs with his eyes closed.....Dragon's party will start after dinner...."

We all went up after dinner. He'd spread a blanket out on the floor, with places and plastic cups set out. I was glad to see that Puppy was invited; he occupied a seat across from Dragon. There were places for all of us.

Jack pointed out the games. On the bed his pillow leaned against the wall, and there were a handful of paper bananas. "This game is called 'Ring the Gack.'" (Reference from Dr. Seuss, by the way.) If you land one banana on the pillow, you get to choose one prize....." Jack landed four; I managed two. It was tougher than you might think.

He held out a box of prizes. I recognized the box from one of his Hot Wheels toys; the prizes were a hodgepodge of small things he'd raided from "Mousetrap" and other games, which hopefully would one day find their way back into those various games (I am not optimistic).

"The other game," he said, indicating a colored blanket set up next to his dresser, "is 'Guess the colors.' You have to guess what colors the blanket is made of." I noticed the blue, red, green, orange, and black stripes on the blanket. Um, I said. Brown? He said, no. Blue? "Yes, good, Daddy." White? "No." Um....He leaned close to me and whispered. I said, red? "Good job, Daddy. You get a gold coin." He let me choose a gold coin from the toy box.

Afterward we had soda and cake. I think Dragon had a very nice birthday.