Bastian Turns Five

As always, we journeyed to my mother's house for Bastian's birthday. She was unfortunately on call all weekend (she's a Certified Nurse Midwife) which in her busy practice means that she doesn't get any sleep because she's at the hospital nonstop. She did make it for the party, however. Usually we have Grandma around to bake the cake and make all the food (so rough, I know), so this year my sisters, husband and I had to do all the hard work. My mother is a wonderful cook and baker, so while the rest of us are perfectly capable, she really enjoys the work and is generally more skilled.

Natalie and Bastian baked the cake. While working on it, Natalie had the following text conversation with a friend:

Friend: So did you finally find something to do tonight?
Natalie: I'm baking a cake.
Friend: It's 11:30!
Natalie: It's for my nephew's birthday. He's helping me.
Friend: What's he doing up?!?!
Natalie: Well I'm not putting him to bed.

I found it amusing anyway.

She iced the cake the next morning.
Bastian again helped.
Bastian requested that his cake have Dora, Diego, Boots, and a gnome on a rocket. I had no idea what he was talking about. I did suspect that he wanted the whole cake to look like that, so the characters were in icing, but I knew there was no way I was going to pull that off. Aleks and I scoured Target for figurines. We did find some miniature garden gnomes, but then he explained that Bastian wanted a World of Warcraft gnome and not a garden gnome, which I am told, looks like a "fat little Santa Claus." The World of Warcraft gnomes evidently look totally different. I was also informed that the rocket he spoke of was not to look like a spaceship, but more like a bomb. I did not understand this whole idea at all. Alas, we found nothing else resembling any of it in the store, so I had to come up with a new plan.

Good for me, I'm pretty smart. Because that's what it takes to come up with the solution to this. I found pictures of each of the required parts in a Google image search, printed them out, then glued them to cardstock and taped them to skewers. I even cut out the word, "Five," for Diego, Dora, and Boots to hold. Turns out, I'm awesome and my solution was perfectly pleasing to my new five-year-old. Whew.
At some point in our party, Bastian found this in the attic room and became the Big Bad Wolf for quite awhile.

After a poison ivy scare and a subsequent bath (as well as a resulting very bad mood for mama), we had cake and candles and wishes.

Aleks and the cousins went off alone again. Aleks performed with his feet.
Then there was swimming in the hot sun.


Because we camped out for Aleks' birthday last August, it became evident that we were expected to camp for all birthdays from now on. Or at least those birthdays belonging to the boys. Jim had a big pile of brush for burning. We lit the whole thing on fire. It was a really, really big fire.
Then we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores with them. We also roasted hotdogs. When it became bedtime, Aleks told us all a scary story. I discovered then that his love of fantasy has created a total love of story-telling in him. He is ingenious with words. I can tell that it's all mostly borrowed at this time, but the metaphors he used and the way that he phrased things was brilliant for his age, even for borrowing. Our friends Amanda and Nick camped with us and they were thoroughly impressed by Aleks. They went on at length about how smart he is. I couldn't help but be proud!
And so, Bastian is five now. My youngest baby is very much no longer a baby. Sigh.