Jack's "Pretend" Birthday

At Jack's preschool, the kids with summer birthday's get to celebrate the last few weeks of school. They call it their "pretend" birthdays.

Today was Jack's party. Like any good and neurotic Mommy, I agonized over what to bring in for a snack. The school has a rule against cupcakes, grapes, popcorn, and anything containing eggs or peanuts, as Jack's best friend Thomas is allergic. These rules made me a creative mute. Sigh, I finally decided last week to make "Magic Jell-O" (the recipe is on the box...not too creative, eh?). Anyway, I made them Sunday while I was home with a certain girl who spent the night before throwing up and cuddling with Daddy. Double sigh.

This morning before I took Jack to school, I was making sure I had everything ready for the special snack. As I was looking at the gummy worms that I was going to put on top of the green jell-o I noticed that they were "manufactured in a facility that packages eggs, nuts, milk, wheat...". Grrr. I can't send Jack to school with a special snack that would kill his best friend now can I? So I get Jack to school and proceed to 3 stores, trying to find acceptable gummies. I finally found them at Target. I love Target. I spend too much money at Target. But I digress.

Liv and I had to run to Aldi and get some things so by the time we got back to our house, I had just enough time to get the snacks finished and loaded into the car. So of course when Liv was getting out of the car she fell on the driveway and skinned up her knees. You would have thought that she lost a leg. Much screaming commenced while I ran around trying to find the Dora band-aids, because the regular band-aids were going to "hurt" her, but the Dora band-aids would make it "all better". Guess who couldn't find the Dora band-aids? So after trying to convince a screaming 2 year old that a regular band-aid would be fine, I RAN around the kitchen trying to get everything finished and put in the car. Liv's still sniveling at this point and moving slower than molasses. I get everyone and everything in the car and take off, carefully of course because the snack cups are sliding around at a very disconcerting angle.

Did I mention that it was 90 degrees at 9am this morning? That's just wrong.

So I arrive to school, sweaty, and take the first batch of snacks to class. I ran back out to the car to get the last batch and Liv (who is still ticked at me). Jack's classroom is a sauna. It's as hot as it is outside, and there is no air circulating. Great. It's another 20 minutes before the class is ready for their snacks, so I watched, kept an eye on Liv and continued to sweat profusely. Finally we sang to Jack and he got to do his felt birthday cake on the flannel board. He was happy with his snack, and that's all that matters.

But I'm still hot.

I think we'll be playing outside in the hose this afternoon.