Happy Birthday, William!

After living with William while he made the most of his "Twos" the entire family breathed a sigh of relief when William turned three a couple weeks ago.  Of course, those old sayings don't actually determine behavior, but there is certainly something to them.  Eric and I observed, once Joseph was about four that age two seems to be hard on the parents but age three seems to be hard on the child.  That held true for Margaret and, so far, for William as well.  Three-year-olds seem not so much naughty as in need of a lot of support as they see their big ideas fail in light of their limited abilities.  

We love our sweet little William (of course!).  He has been the family ham and clown since he was very young.  He has, I think, the most advanced verbal skills of any of our children yet and he is at a particularly cute age as he prattles along a mile a minute with that dinstinctive toddler accent ("Mommy!  I heaw da twash twuck!"  "Is dat da wivah?")  We can't get enough.

William woke the morning of his birthday to this in the living room:

Some of you will, no doubt, recognize this as the "circus tent" from IKEA.  It's been a big favorite on shopping trips for several months and it was actually supposed to be part of the kids' Christmas present.  But they were all sold out when I did the shopping in early December.  Since we give the kids their "big gift" on Epiphany I didn't worry.  But they were still sold out in early January.  So I decided Gregory would get it for his birthday.  But they were sold out on January 12.  January 29th was finally my lucky day and I got this home in time for William's birthday.  It's not actually very big and it is somewhat collapsible.  All the kids can squeeze into it comfortably when they are playing together and they can drag it from room to room.

Funny story:  I set up the tent the night before after the kids were in bed but left the lights on at that end of the house.  Before we'd gone to bed William woke up needing to use the bathroom.  Eric carried him down the hall and--in a sleepy stupor--William looked over Eric's shoulder and said, "Are Joseph and Margie in that tent?"  He was not at all surprised to see a tent in his living room in the middle of the night.  We killed the lights and put him back to bed and he didn't remember it by morning.

\His other gifts (a set of puzzles from GI Grandpa and a hat and mittens) were waiting inside the tent for him.  

The tent has been a huge hit with the whole family.

 For dinner William requested "bean pizza" and chocolate cake.  We've been trying to eat less wheat and I recently found a fantastic black bean cake recipe.  If you are looking for a gluten-free chocolate cake recipe for yourself or someone else, I can't recommend this one enough.  It is really, really good.  And I don't mean "good, for a bean cake."  I mean, it's our new favorite cake.  Eric wants it for his birthday (but with frosting).

For the "bean pizza" I basically made a taco pizza but with black beans instead of ground beef.  It was very yummy.

A lovely celebration for a lovely boy.