Happy thirty-third birthday, Daddy!
Ethan, Ehlana, and I gave Dad his birthday wake-up call in bed, and while I’m sure that he loved all of the presents he was given today; his favorite – and Mom’s – was the no-more-midnight-feedings gift from the twins. They’ll adjust the times when needed, but the rough sleep schedule will now be from ten until six. If they’re like I was as a baby, Ethan and Ehlana won’t need more than eight hours a night from now on. I’m sure they’ll have lots of nights when they don’t even need eight hours – I’ve been there, and tried my best not to wake Mom up whenever I was too wired to sleep. At least they’ll have their iPads to play with when that happens to them. The best I could do back when I was their age was to have Mom leave a few books in my crib, and it wasn’t particularly easy to flip pages or move them around when I was four or five months old without using my Telekinesis.
That got a bit off-topic - back to the birthday story.
Dad opened the presents that Mom, Ethan, Ehlana, and I had for him, and then we all got on with a fairly normal weekday morning routine. While I was stuck at school, Mom, Ethan, and Ehlana took Dad out for lunch at the Inn with Aunt Leanne, Uncle Adam, and some of their friends. Rowen came home with me after school, and we helped Mom with the twins, and with getting everything ready for Dad’s birthday dinner and a movie party. Aunt Leanne had a couple of weekend rental moves; so she wasn’t able to escape from the office early; but she and Dad were home for more than an hour before Uncle Adam, Aunt Deborah, and Nick could join us after a busier-than-usual Friday afternoon rush at the clinic was finished.
Uncle Adam and Aunt Deborah had been talking about adding new clinic hours pretty much since taking over from their Grandparents, but now that it looked like they were about to get into the tougher part of their work year; they finally made the decision to put those new hours in place after talking it over during dinner. They picked Wednesday for their new evening hours; and the first Saturday of every month for morning hours that they only expected to need from November through to April or May.
The rest of the dinner conversation was mostly a birthday roast for Dad, and Aunt Leanne was happy to lead that effort. Mom, Dad, and the twins were given get-out-of-cleanup passes and sent into the living room while the rest of us took care of the post-dinner work. Dad picked an action flick for our movie; and we all enjoyed a couple of hours of brainless, fight and blow-stuff-up entertainment. It was time to nurse the twins again after the movie, and Mom had Aunt Leanne and Aunt Deborah to help her with that while Uncle Adam, Nick, Rowen, and I handled the living room cleanup and got our bedtime snacks ready.
Ethan and Ehlana were in their sleepers when they joined us again; and we did the snack and story time in the living room before saying goodnight to our guests and seeing them out. Uncle Adam and Aunt Leanne walked Rowen home, and I was probably changed and in bed before she’d even started giving her Mom and Dad the birthday party recap. Since Mom and Dad are getting to skip their first midnight feeding tonight, I strongly suspected that they were going to end Dad’s birthday the way they’d started it less than twenty-four hours ago; and that was all the motivation I needed to opt for the comparatively early bedtime.
Tomorrow is going to be another long Fall cleanup day, so the extra sleep will help with that. Too bad I couldn’t spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa. They have the weekend off for sightseeing and the move from Chile to Argentina. It’s hard to believe that their trip is nearly half over already, but I’ve missed them a lot too, and can hardly wait for them to get home again in just over two weeks.
There wasn’t anything newsworthy in my email tonight, and it was a light entertainment news night too. Mandy’s telling me to get the extra sleep while we can, so it’s time to wrap this up and do as I’m told. Sometimes, like when Mandy is mothering me, being able to do my own wards so we can talk Telepathically isn’t as great as I thought it would be!