"More than meets the eye..."

Saturday was Son's birthday party. His FIFTH birthday. I still am having a hard time getting my head around that one.

It was, of course, a Transformers birthday -- complete with pinata, Optimus Prime masks, and a theme-based cake. Of course, initially, he wanted ALL the Transformers on the cake. I managed to convince him that I was simply not that good with an icing piping bag. I tried to convince him just to let me decorate the cake with one big Transformer. But, obviously, it was too hard for him to choose WHICH guy from the many that he loves. (Disclaimer: he has never seen the Transformers movie. He, like all the boys in his class, apparently is able to learn the names and powers of such characters through osmosis or the city drinking water. I don't know which.) Finally, we settled on the idea of decorating the cake with planets -- Earth and Cybertron (the Transformers' native soil, as it were) -- and then we would print little pictures of the Transformers and mount them on toothpicks and stand them up all over the planets to signal their journey from one to the other. Son thought it would be good to give Earth to the Transformer Autobots (the good guys, in case you were wondering), and Cybertron to the Decepticons (the bad guys, FYI). (Aside: if you have a son, you, too, will learn all of these things and more -- such as the "real names when they aren't wearing their suits" of all superheroes ever invented. Five points to anyone who can offer the real names of Captain America or the Invisible Woman, without googling them. It took Husband only about 3 seconds to be able to reel those off.)

By the time we finished decorating the cake, and putting on eight gazillion stars, Son decided we didn't need to put any Transformers at all. Which was fine with me.

The party itself was a lot of fun, if somewhat wild, between the pinata competitions and the chasing after each other with light-sabers. What did I expect?

Here's what I have to say about having a five year old: there should be names for the afflictions that come with the territory.

First, there is Legofingeritis: the painful tenderness of the pads in your thumb and first two fingers that is the direct result of spending two hours assembling the tiniest legos ever made into a catapult that could heft a large dog. (Not that I don't love legos, mind you. Just that the excitement of birthday legos requires INSTANT and SUSTAINED attention to their assembly.)

Second, there is Transformer-graine: the headache produced by by asked 437 times in one day to "just transform this guy back into a robot/truck, Mama." I don't know about you, but I think that you should be required to have an advanced degree in engineering even to be able to purchase Transformers. They are, in many ways, a fascinating 3-D puzzle. But when your newly-five year old has three new Transformers of the difficult kind (some are much easier to transform than others; the big ones require a Master Puzzler), you will be doing much transforming for many subsequent days.

I do not mean this to sound all gripe-ish. This is merely intended to be informative, should you be approaching Kindergarten with a son of your own one day. In fact, Son is mostly a delightful child, and he told me, with a contented sigh as I tucked him in bed at night, that the day of his actual birthday had been "the best ever."

He also, this morning, did a manfully kind Big Brother thing in the car on the way to school. Daughter was crying and crying and crying that her hands were cold. (In her defense, it was only 10 degrees out, and the car heat takes a while to kick in when it's that cold.) First, he tried to play a clapping game with her, to take her mind off it. When she couldn't (or wouldn't) do that, he leaned across the seat and put her mittens on for her. He spoke softly and gently, shh, shh, shh'd her most kindly, rubbed her hands between his own, and generally did everything he could to warm her up until we got to school. All completely unprompted by me. It was lovely. After we dropped her off in her classroom, I walked him back to his.

"Hey," I said. "I need to tell you something." He looked up. "Thank you for being such a good big brother in the car this morning. That was very kind of you to help your sister like that. I was really proud of you."

He beamed up at me, then suddenly got a little shy with the praise and buried his face in my coat.

So that is five years old: many good intentions; some real moments of altruism; pride, and shyness, all rolled into one.

Oh, and a nearly-frantic love of Transformers.

Of course, this would not be a birthday in our house without the obligatory Making of the Cake photos. We do nothing by halves. Including licking cake bowls.

Who couldn't love that face?


Happy Birthday, my darling boy!