Happy Birthday To My Awesome Son

So when I looked at this week last Monday, today was the flex point for everything. Not only is this morning the Town Hall that I have spent a lot of attention on yesterday, today is also Johnnie's birthday. That alone makes it a very important day indeed, perhaps THE most important day of the month. He turned 7 today and that to me is a bit of  a timemarker since I had it in my mind that statistic that a child's cognitive development and personality development pretty much happens the first 7 years of their lives. That their brainwaves are pretty much in theta all the time. With that I always want to make sure Johnnie has a sense of routine, that he feels safe and that he feels loved. I have always tried to make sure I was present whenever he looked for connection. And I think I've done a decent job of that. Not that I can stop doing that now that he's 7. It's just that now it's a different ballgame. If he's not in theta so much, now he can really be affected by external stimuli. And I have to be careful of that too for him. But for today, just for today, I wanted to make sure he at least knows that we care that it is his birthday. Which is why I did a stealth invite to Blair Olivera so Brooklyn and her sister can join him for pizza tonight at Pitfire. I even pinged Lisa so she can try to be there if she chose to. I'm sure she has work and other activities lined up but at least this way she has a choice.  And so with that, we were off to school with all the goodies he wanted to hand off to his classmates and I was back in plenty of time for the Town Hall. Of course what would be a Town Hall that I am hosting if there wasn't something that went off kilter?! This time, it was that people got let in at 8:15 just as we were doing pre-event huddling. And so we had to kill that in a hurry and I had to put on 2 more songs including the one I planned to play 3 minutes before the TH started. Yikes! Threw off my sequencing totally. Fortunately it ended up working out other than about 15 dead seconds while I searched for the taped benediction that got re-queued. The transitions went so much better than last time and so much so we actually finished 15 minutes early. Pretty good all in all I'd say. And so with that the first part of the day was done. I say that only because I stayed up late thinking about this presentation. I'm not sure why it caused so much stress, but it did. That coupled with Johnnie's birthday elevated my RHR a full 2 points LOL. But now that THAT's done, I can finally focus on Johnnie.

He's in school obviously but I just sent him some loving thoughts... imagined the other kids in his class singing him Happy Birthday. Getting his birthday picture taken at STAR. And the faces of the other kids while he handed out his treats. I don't have any such birthday memories when I was a kid. Probably why I am expending so much energy making sure Johnnie remembers that lots of us remembered his birthday. And before long it was 5 PM and time to pick him up from school. We went to Pitfire Pizza immediately after STAR and when we got there Brooklyn and Bailey were already there waiting with a balloon and a present. YES! That was all I wanted. I mean we can always hang out together Little Bug and I. It's different when other kids are there. Even if Bailey is fighting with Johnnie over the balloon and Johnnie and Brooklyn are trying to avoid Bailey. Kids. I had my usual pasta tonight but the lady who took our order mistook the pizza for a full one instead of the kids one. And we ended up with 2 extra large pizzas, one a burrata one that I have no idea how they mistook. No wonder it cost $70 for the order! I didn't even think about it twice actually. I totally didn't care. I even sent the 2 extra pizzas home with Blair to give to Jason her husband and her mom. It's not like we were going to eat it. And as it turned out, Lisa decided not to come. She did call Johnnie later on and they Face Timed before she went on to her soccer game. See? She's neck full in her activities and that's ok. She hung out with Johnnie on FaceTime for a full 15 minutes in fact, until it was time for her to start her game. And I'm glad Johnnie got a chance to talk to her. Wouldn't want him to think mommy didn't think about him tonight even if they had already done stuff this past weekend.  Afterwards, Johnnie took stock of his birthday loot. He actually did get lost of cards from classmates. Hand-made ones actually. They were so cute. And he still got to have ice cream for dessert courtesy of my freezer. By 8 PM I could feel myself starting to fade. Lots of adrenaline today and not so much sleep from last night would do that to me. I even nixed the Claire bath tonight. She will have to stay dirty for Lisa. And so it was that I felt good about Johnnie's day today. I didn't even make him write anything as I usually do. I'll let it all sink in. I asked him if he had a good day today. And I got a matter-of-factly YES as a response. My little one isn't so little anymore. He may still be sleeping with his Fuzzy next to him and he may still be talking about kid things all the time. But I sense his world is expanding. And I'm going to do my very best to make sure it is filled with wonder and laughter and I iwll hold his hand for as long as he lets me. I love you my Little Bug. You will always be my Little Bug. Happy Birthday.