Happy Birthday to my brother and Kish on June 4th and to my nephew, O, on the 5th.

Today we celebrated Pit's birthday by having a party with his friends in our home. I am really thrilled at how well it went...no tears, no fights, just fun. We invited 9 kids but only 5 could come. I have to say that Frunty did an excellent job of helping me prepare by blowing up balloons and creating the tin-can-toss game which was a hit, albeit noisy, with tin cans crashing to the ground. We also did fishing on the back porch and it luckily stopped raining for the short time we needed to enjoy that game. We also enjoyed pass-the-parcel and the prize was Haribos that all the kids could have on the spot. For craft time, we coloured some pirate pictures and decorated picture frames again this year. I will put the birthday picture in them tomorrow when I get them developed and deliver to each child. The two girls worked on making candle holders but the boys were pretty happy playing with the new gifts together.

I like how Frunty told the kids what to do next and how he explained the gift-giving game during which you pass around the balloon and do a song. When the song stops and the balloon is in your hands, the birthday child opens your gift. I forgot the name but will ask Frunts tomorrow. His French is so great and his ability to organize the games and kids really helped me a great deal.

Daddy went early to the market and bought beautiful fruit for the party: watermelon, cherries, apricots and tons of strawberries. I am super pleased with the two cakes I made from the cookbook Daddy gave me for gluten-free vegans. I made a divine chocolate brownie-cake and a carrot cake with pineapple and shredded coconut. I really loved when Pit and Frunty laughed when they saw the chocolate cake which I made into a train. On the front car, I had put a picture of Pit's face and on the caboose, a picture of his feet. Frunty wants the same for his cake! He wants a carrot cake with chocolate icing for his swimming party at our club next Saturday.

It was just such a nice party. And Pit and Frunty played in the front room so beautifully afterwards with the late evening sun starting to shine in. I took a picture and will include it soon. It was a beautiful moment to see them together like that, enjoying eachother's company. What a day!

Pit and I practiced some more bicycle exercises and his confidence since yesterday has really improved. He's a lot more comfortable now with sitting on his seat with his feet on the pedals while I hold the bike. Then, after a countdown, I let go and he tips over while putting his feet down. He's maybe not ready to pedal but at least he's not wailing for his training wheels.

After the bike practice, he got into the baby seat on the back of The Mommy's bike and I took him and Frunty to the Environmental Day festival at the Cinquantenaire Park. Getting them out of the house a few hours before the start of his party was important to allow The Mommy to make last minute preparations, not to mention letting Frunty burn off some excitement. They had fun exploring the various expositions and collected some give-away goodies - reflector straps for cyclists - and spaghetti serving forks(?!) Unfortunately, it started to rain - we were not dressed for getting wet - but I never heard a single complaint despite the damp cold. Now that we're back home, wet clothes are a perfect excuse for putting on dry clothes that are nicer and more appropriate for the birthday party that begins in 15 minutes!

I purchased a number of fresh fruits and vegetables at the market this morning. One fruit in particular was a hit. No, it wasn’t the watermelon or the strawberries or cherries but the figs. Every once in a while, the boys enjoy dried figs but sometimes they don’t like the toughness of the dried fruit. This time there was no toughness with the fresh figs. They were good and maybe could be a little riper but they gobbled it up, especially Frunty. I think Pit still prefers the dried ones because they don’t make his hands so messy and sticky.

It was reasonably sunny and warm, and The Mommy needed time to bake cakes for tomorrow's party, so I took the boys to Woluwe Park for a couple of hours. It was a good chance to play outside and kick a ball around. We also tried tossing the boomerangs but we don't have the technique to make come back full circle. We'll have to keep practicing. One thing we did practice was Pit's bicycle riding. Two weekends ago, he wanted to remove his training wheels and ride down the street like his older brother. So I unscrewed the brackets and held the bike for him while he peddled for about 10 metres before he tipped over and had a little fright.

Ever since that time, Pit has just wanted the training wheels back on. But today in the park, I convinced him to try a couple of exercises without actually riding. So we took time to stretch up and down, then jump up and down and finally stand on one leg, then the other. To make a long story short, we went through a series of steps until he wanted to get back on the bicycle simply to avoid my mundane cycling warm-ups. The best part was getting him to sit on the seat as he practiced putting his feet down when he tipped over. At least he's not adamant about getting his training wheels back on and he's back to looking at Frunty for inspiration.

Perhaps it's been written somewhere in the blog before but it's worth mentioning again because of what happened this morning. Pit crept into our bed in the middle of the night and was between us starting to stir. Before either grown-up was fully awake, as if some huge lottery had just been won, Pit exclaimed, "Yoohoo! I touched your neck!"

Here's the background to his excitement. Ever since he stopped breast-feeding, Pit has required some alternative skin-to-skin contact. Since the milk bar was closed, the next closest place was the neck. He started caressing The Mommy’s neck which was cute and cuddly. This transition has persisted over the past two years and at times it has been less than desirable to have a small person clawing at your neck with cold hands or razor-sharp baby nails. Thus began the real transition of limiting neck touching of The Mommy. Naturally, I became the next obvious target and over the past several months most bed-time routines involve getting my neck caressed. Sometimes there are comments about my "sharp" skin due to stubble or questions about that "bump" on my throat, but for the most part it's a short moment and reasonably bearable.

Actually getting to touch The Mommy’s neck is like winning some major prize and hence Pit’s super excitement (and the jolt out of morning drowsiness) with the loud “Yoohoo! I touched your neck!”

This morning The Mommy and I were waking up the boys and Pit perked up very fast and said,

"Mommy, I have a joke."
"Ok, what it is?", The Mommy said.
"What's your name?", he said.
"Mommy"
[short pause]
"Now you say 'What's your name?'"
"What's your name?"
"[Pit]"
[another short pause]
"Where's the funny part?"
"I don't know.", he says in a sleepy voice.

I think he woke up too fast and had something else running through his head but just couldn't remember it.

About a week ago we noticed a sign in the neighbourhood advertising a street sale on June 1. Monday is actually a statutory vacation day and we had been planning a 3 day long weekend in France but decided to fore-go the trip in favour of staying around town to participate in the street sale. Not to buy of course, but to sell! In the process of some harsh spring cleaning, we identified many items that were just not worth keeping. So we moved the contents of our cellar storage room (la cave) to a piece of sidewalk next to Petillon metro station at around 8am with the intent of making a few extra euro. The boys helped with the the first full car load of stuff and I realised as I was unloading the second car load that the boys needed to be removed from the situation otherwise our house would refill itself with other peoples cellar storage stuff.

By 9:30am, I parked the car at the edge of the Forêt de Soignes and tricked them into trekking 2.2km to a playground. We stopped along the way to balance-walk on fallen tree trunks, float sticks down the creek straight from the spring source of water, observe and confuse a chipmunk for a lizard, lament that the pond where Mowgli would wade was now fenced off to protect the nesting area of the martin-pêcheur, and so on a so forth. One and a half hours later, we arrived at the playground whose centrepiece is a great big pirate ship next to the Rouge-Cloître. After about an hour, I warned the boys that we should start heading back towards the car if they were hungry. Frunty almost immediately campaigned to his little brother to head back because he was starving and Pit starting asking to be carried home. I announced that it would not be necessary for Pit to be carried because we would take a short cut and Frunty replied that he hoped "...the short cut would not be too long." Lucky for everyone, I wasn't a trickster and only marched them 1.5km back to the car during which time we had to listen to Frunty complain that Pit was too slow and that we could die of hunger. By 1pm, we were home and snacking on rice-crackers with peanut butter and jam.

Shortly afterwards, we were on bike to the snack shop for falafel and fries to deliver to The Mommy who most surely needed a break. But no! The Mommy was fading but did not want to part with her belongings without some cash to show for it until the very last moment. So I ran back home to get a duffel bag of soccer balls and took the boys (and some neighbourhood friends) to the local school playground for about an hour of football and playtime. By this time The Mommy was finished so I got the car and filled it with half a load.

Thanks to The Mommy's hard-sell sales tactics, the other 1.5 car loads that I brought 7 hours earlier had been transformed into a neat 3 digit cash amount. Everybody pitched in today, especially the boys who had some angst about parting with their old things but managed to understand what needed to be done.