Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Change the Date, Please!

It's a big day in the household today!

Kurtis is four years old today so, in celebration of that event, we had our little family dinner and party for him last night. He had told Mandy he wanted a Spiderman cake but I had already planned to make him a Banana Split Cake for his big event so we told him the chocolate squiggles on the top of the whipped cream were Spiderman's webs and he seemed okay then with that idea.

Actually, he was so excited over seeing the Spiderman candle -just one -in the middle of the "cake" I don't think he gave it a second thought.

All was going very nicely with the cake, the singing of Happy Birthday and all that, including the presents. He was so excited, opening his gifts until he had a little problem getting the last package from Aunt Carrie out of the bottom of the Spiderman gift bag. So Maya tried to give him some assistance.

That worked fine until it came to the package from Uncle Clate and Aunt Betty that he had some problems with the scotch tape on it and again, Maya was coming to the rescue. However, after she got the tape removed, she wanted to keep on opening the gift and we told her that she needed to give it back to Kurtis so HE could finish opening it.

And that's about when the trouble began!

It was about at that point that she realized that he was the one receiving the gifts and that there were none for her -even though Aunt Carrie had brought a separate package of Play-Do with her so that Maya did have a little something new too. But Maya didn't see things that way. Not at all!

Judging by the volume unleashed in her crying, one would have thought she was being beaten within an inch of her life and you'd have expected that both faucets of the tear ducts on this kid had to have been opened full steam!

She wailed, ranted, screamed -yep, had one royal hissy fit that rapidly expanded into a massive meltdown.

Insisting that today was her birthday -not Kurtis -was the main theme and then, she went on to try to tell us that her birthday was this or that date in April but certainly not in October. All the while, she kept sobbing that she didn't get a present and why didn't she get a present and no explanation in the world about how Aunt Carrie had brought her a package of play-do too was acceptable.
Here's the saddest little girl ever helping her little brother celebrate his fourth birthday! (Be thankful this is not a video with sound too cause the noise she was making was really deafening, trust me!)

After trying and trying to soothe her, to get her to understand that she can't just arbitrarily change the date of her own birthday, Mandy finally gave up on getting her to quiet down and ended up taking her into the bathroom, changing her into her pajamas and sending her to bed.

Truthfully, I think she was a bit overtired from having had some playtime outside earlier in the day and before supper and was just unable to unwind from it all so that the presents and watching/helping Kurtis with his gifts was just enough then to send her over the edge because very quickly, after going up to bed, the house was quiet and no small child was screaming, crying, wailing or moaning in disappointment.

I'm trying to upload two videos -one of Kurtis singing Happy Birthday to himself, along with the rest of the family and the other is of him opening his presents, up until the time that Maya decided to take offense at the whole procedure. However, YouTube is taking forever in uploading those videos so I'll have to post them later on another post.

8 comments:

CiCi said...

Happy Fourth Birthday to Kurtis!! You and your family make each birthday and holiday special.

Linda said...

Happy Birthday to Kurtis!

The great thing is that someday he's going to be able to go back and read your blog and see what fun it really was!

Jocelyn said...

In the moment, I'm sure the hilarity of that photo is lost--but trust me, it's something to show her in 20 years. So funny.

She's just about at that tipping point of learning to accept that not everything is about her...but what a hard lesson. I think it comes around kindergarten or so?

Diva's Thoughts said...

Aaawww....! Poor little Maya. She definitely doe snot look like a happy camper.

That cake looks amazing!!!!!

Suldog said...

Happy Birthday to Kurtis! Heck of a good-lookin' cake there, Jeni. Any leftovers?

(Word veri, and I'm not making this up : cooking)

terri said...

The cake looks and sounds delicious! And somehow I'm not surprised that Kurtis was just happy to have a Spider Man candle.

Poor Maya. I remember being a kid and thinking my birthday would NEVER arrive. I'm sure that's just how she felt.

Maggie May said...

Belated Happy Birthday to Curtis. Glad he had a happy time in spite of Maya's little episode. All part of family life, I'm afraid!
This little chunk out of their lives is now on record for all eternity!

Nuts in May

Mrs4444 said...

Poor kid and poor you! I remember the days like that, when the kids were overtired and completely irrational. Sometimes, you just have to say, "Okay, you can keep crying all you want, but we are not going to listen to you do it, so you can go cry in your room now."