Last night I told JediBoy that today would be A.A. Milne’s birthday. He was immediately excited to have something to celebrate, and asked if we had been invited to his party! After gently explaining why we wouldn’t actually be celebrating with A.A. Milne, we talked about some things we could do on our own. JediBoy asked for balloons, streamers, and presents.
This morning, the first thing we did was to roll over in bed and grab Winnie-the-Pooh and read about fifty pages of it before even getting up. Then we wandered downstairs for breakfast. After breakfast, JediBoy suggested that we watch his new video together - coincidentally, the 50 cent video he picked out at the thrift store yesterday was a 4-episode tape of the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Disney).
We cuddled in the office for 45 minutes to watch the video, and then decided to go shopping. We went first to the craft store, where I gave JediBoy a five dollar bill and promised to not peek, while offering help at finding prices. I bought some valentine stamps that were on sale, two bear cookie cutters, and some presents for JediBoy: a small zippered pouch with 24 short colored pencils, a Pooh magic ink book and a Pooh watercolor book. He had the best time telling me to look away and not peek, but he did give himself away when he asked me if he had enough money to buy two of the Cars Pez dispensers!
We shopped for some groceries after that (I even picked up a go-cup of Teddy Grahams for JediBoy without him seeing) and he had chosen a bag of Twizzlers to buy for PisecoDad - but asked to put those back and buy him a box of Special K with Red Berries instead! So we did. We also bought “special lunches” - frozen meals. Chicken nuggets for him and Amy’s Palak Paneer for me (my favorite).
As soon as we got home, he was madly excited to wrap our presents for each other. We used the Sunday funnies and although he had initially said, “But you have to help me wrap presents!” he did a great job wrapping my (surprise!) Pez dispenser. We took the gifts into the living room and he was more excited for me to open my gift than to see what he had. It turned out that he’d bought two Sally dispensers and kept one for himself! So we shared a little Pez and he unwrapped his things.
After our special lunches, he worked for a while doing some of the watercolor painting, then asked to make our special honey cookies.
Don’t they look yummy? Here’s the easy recipe:
Pooh’s honey cookies
1/2 c. butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 c. honey
2 1/4 c. flour
Cream the first three ingredients with electric mixer. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time, each time mixing completely. Form the dough into two balls. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and freeze for about 15 minutes. Use a rolling pin to roll dough out to a 9 inch circle, then cut cookies. Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes until edges are golden brown. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.
We iced these with a mixture of confectioner’s sugar, milk, honey and red food coloring to make Pooh’s red shirt.
We made a second batch so we’d have enough extra to take to the parent center’s Dinner Bell tonight. On the menu was sloppy joes and chicken noodle soup, both of which JediBoy loved. He had a fantastic time playing - he found a knight’s hood (fabric helmet?) in the dress-up area and wore it the entire time, mostly sitting on the bouncy horse and making up knight stories. There were tons of people there tonight and it was loud and crazy with kids running and yelling, and there he bounced, the eye of the storm, calm inside insanity, happily observing the kids and carving his own comfortable space.
When it was time to go, I asked to look at the hood to see if I could make one for him at home, and one of the women who works there offered to let us borrow it - and the matching shirt he’d overlooked - for the week. JediBoy (should we call him Sir JediBoy?) was thrilled and didn’t want to even put his coat on to cover them up.
From start to finish, it was a great day. Happy Milne’s Birthday to you!
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