Vincent's Fifth Birthday

Wow. Wow. Wow. I can't believe that Vincent is FIVE!! I know every year that goes by in a child's life is painfully short for a parent, and agonizingly long for the child. Somehow, this is the first birthday where I've really begun to be surprised by his age. Some things I've been ruminating on the past week:

• Vince is already well past the age to be able to hold life-long memories. As an imperfect parent, I find this both exciting and frightening.
• Vince is a kid, not a "preschooler", and certainly not a toddler!
• It took less than five years for Vincent to become a kind, compassionate, thoughtful, respectful, (generally) obedient, and surprisingly clever young boy. It has taken me over thirty years to attempt to develop some of those traits, and most of them I still don't possess!
• All the wondering we did about the teeny tiny beautiful baby we brought home from the hospital -- the sweet little prince we were instantly in love with -- "What will his voice be like?" "What will be his favorite food?" "Is he going to like cars, or sports; fishing or hiking?" "What will make him laugh?" "What will make him sad?" ... All those questions (and more) have been answered and have now led to even more questions and speculations!
• Most of the plans we had about discipline, training, schooling, developing, character-building, etc. have been reevaluated, abandoned, reimplemented, forgotten, improved, and some times regretted.

On Vincent's actual birthday we had a family celebration. Dan came home early from work and we went to a nearby Wild Animal Safari. It was so much fun! We ALL loved it. Well, it took Silas a while to love it, but he got there. Some friends warned us that we should take one of the rental vans, and boy, were we glad we did! The animals would have dented up our van. I will let the photos speak for themselves for the most part.

 

 
Silas is not a fan of four-legged friends.
He was pretty freaked out when a giant
buffalo came and stuck his tongue in his
window. Eventually he got into throwing
the food out to them, though.

 

Below is the "mean donkey." He "bit" Anthony. I'm pretty sure it was more Anthony's fault than the donkey's. Anthony liked to let his hand sort of linger in their mouths, but the donkey chomped with his teeth, whereas most of the others just sort of put their lips around your hand. It was pretty gross; and for Anthony, pretty traumatic, but he did finally recover toward the end of the drive.

There were DOZENS of turtles. We thought of our sweet cousin Jacob the whole time we passed these big fellas. He loved turtles!

Stay tuned for our next post with pictures from Vincent's Super-Fun Birthday party at Sweet Frog!!