Four

While you wouldn't immediately think it to be, the fourth birthday really feels like a milestone.  It's not like Finn can now buy beer (except in south Florida, where he's been legal for two years), but he's no longer a toddler.  He's now a 100% little boy.

That's really sad.  How much longer will I be able to just pick him up and tickle him or kiss him all over his face without him punching me in mine?  Given my lack of gym-time recently, I'm guessing not much longer.

Dear Fourth-Birthday-Finn,

Don't get any bigger.  Don't get any older.  I may use this space to make fun of you every chance I get, but (as you'll learn), that's just my way of masking my own feelings.  And my own feelings right now are already nostalgic for yesterday, when you were still my (three-year-old) baby.

Here's the birthday boy with the enormous cement mixer that the Mi-mi (binky) fairy brought him last night for finally giving up his nighttime pacifier.

Four years old and still sleeping with a pacifier.  That's embarrassing, Future Finn.

Just kidding.  Please don't hit me.

Happy birthday, buddy.  I love you more than all of the popcorn and afternoon baseball games in the world.  You may not be my baby any more, but you'll always be my number one boy.


Love,
Daddy

Lightnoodles

Wednesday is Finn's fourth birthday.  That's ridiculous.  It seems like only yesterday that he was a baby, throwing up in my mouth.  And now, here we are, four years later and he's a fully formed kid, throwing up in my lap.

It wasn't really his fault that he threw up on me this time.  The flight back from Key West was really bumpy and people all over the plane were blowing chunks.  Did you guys know that they don't stock air sickness bags in each seat pocket on airplanes?  I didn't.  I do now.   By the end of the second flight, my Spidey sense was so in tune with his stomach that I didn't even need to look over - I had a bag ready without losing my place in my book.  Shame I didn't develop that skill on the first flight.

So after a week that included the turbulence-induced vomitting, as well as an overly-tired-induced "night terror" attack, it was time for some birthday party fun to lighten the mood.  Finn really wanted a Star Wars themed party, so Kitty and I did some digging online and quickly determined that we couldn't have a REAL Star Wars party without pool noodle lightsabers.

We then determined this week that creating 15 pool noodle lightsabers is a royal pain in the fingers, particularly when - after a couple of glasses of wine - you decide that each lightsaber handle has to be "unique" and "creative".  Stupid, complicated, creative wine.  But check out how cool they turned out:

Of course, we're not the only ones that think they're cool.  Turns out pool noodle lightsabers are a huge hit with four year olds - and their faces.  Luckily, despite each and every kid's very best efforts at taking each others' heads off, there was only superficial damage done.  Which was good, given the extremely skeptical looks the folks at the YMCA gave us when we rolled into their gym with a box of 15 of these kid-killers.  By the end, even they were recommending these as a party favor.

If you decided to totally copy us and steal this idea, one word of caution, thief:  apparently March is not a great time to buy pool noodles in the Pacific Northwest.  Weird.  Since we couldn't find them locally, I had to go online, where we had to acquire a case of twenty even though we were only going to use 7 of them for the party.  Given that we live in Seattle, with roughly 4 pool days per year, I'm hoping to put the extras to good use in the bathtub.  I can probably only squeeze about 4-5 of them  in the tub at a time, so let me know if any of you are in the market for some noodles.


I'll sell them to you cheap-like.  Or perhaps trade them for some extra air sickness bags.  You can never have enough of those things.

Redeye

In just a couple of hours, we're leaving on a red-eye flight to Key West.  This will be Finn's first overnight flight.  Someone in this family has a sordid history of drinking through red-eye flights and forgetting to sleep, hence our avoidance of them for the last several years.  I'll let you guess who.

But there was no avoiding it this year and I'm sure Finn will weather it just fine.  We get a daily quote from TinyTribe and this was Finn's today:

Just don't know.  I'm going on a plane tonight.  I talk about Key West and things in Florida.  There a lot of pink flowers that I like in Florida.  I like the chickens the most.  There is a beach there and a dumb truck and a cement mixer and there are beach toys there.  They have beach toys there and a fire engine.  I need to take a plane, two planes.  I think I will take a train, an airport train or something.

I'm guessing that he actually said "dump truck", because I've NEVER heard him disparage a truck before.

The picture here was taken during our trip last year and is still one of my favorites.  It's my homescreen on my phone and I show it at every meeting at work, because it's terribly work appropriate.

My goal now is to take this picture every year until he's 18 and try to pinpoint the exact moment when people go from telling me how cute it is, to telling me how creepy it is,  to slowly backing away and dialing the police.

The over-under is three years.  Tell me if you want in.

Slugger

It's official:  I'm a sports dad!

Since I took my laziness to the extreme and mailed in his tee-ball application, rather than drive the three blocks to sign him up in person, I wasn't sure until yesterday that our letter had actually arrived.  But now that we've received our email welcome to the West Seattle Li'l Pirates, it's on!

At least, it's on for me.  I have no idea how Finn is going to take his first foray into competitive sports.  After all, this is the kid who told me that "roadblocks hurt (his) feelings" when we encountered construction the other day and who spends an entire game of Chutes & Ladders excitedly trying to hit a chute.  Maybe it's just me, but I'm not getting a killer instinct vibe.

We're going to need to work on this quickly, as we've got just three weeks before the games start.  That doesn't give me much time to teach him the fundamentals - like how to slide into second base with your spikes up.  I hear those tiny little baseball uniforms look adorable covered in dirt & blood.

No mercy.

I'm a little disappointed that they put him on the Li'l Pirates.  Hopefully they're a lot better than the big Pirates.  And hopefully Finn's Pirates debut goes better than AJ Burnett's.  

Of course, if Finn manages to break his face bunting off a tee, I think we'll just pack the whole tee-ball career up and head home to play Chutes & Ladders.