Happy Birthday to Me!

I turned 33 yesterday. And since the husband had to travel, it was left to the other little man in my life to make the day special for me. And I have to say, he did a pretty good job of it.

The day started with a card he had made for me the previous day. He was supervised by his grandmother but apparently the creative decisions were all his own. First the outside:

The front cover had his name written on it, with a square that just seems to be there to fill up the extra space, since he couldn't (wouldn't) offer any other explanation for its presence. The back cover completed the family tree with Mama and Dada featuring on it.

The inside of the card was even cuter. Now only an adoring mother can actually figure out what all these seemingly random squiggles are, so let me describe them one at a time.

The left page has a refrigerator and a slide, two of his favourite objects to draw these days. He claims that the squiggle next to the fridge is a tree though less charitable souls have suggested that it might be the artist's rendition of his mean, stingy mother standing guard over all the yummy chocolates stored inside.

On the right page, the thing under 'Mama' is supposedly a banner with 'Happy Birthday' written on it. Now, here's the thing - Ayaan can't spell anything but his name, Mama and Dada. But that does not stop him from pretending that he can. So he will spell any word in a series of Ns and Os and present it with utmost confidence. So if you look carefully, the banner has an O, followed by an inverted N, a regular N and then another O (and I think the squiggle just outside the banner is yet another N). And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we spell 'Happy Birthday' in these parts. And underneath the banner is my birthday cake.

The card was not all. At some point in the day, I was told to wait while he went off to his room to get me my birthday present. He recruited the maid to help and after about half an hour returned with something neatly wrapped in a newspaper and told me it was my present. I opened it to discover that he had packed his giraffe hand puppet and a squeaky noisemaker from our Taboo board game which he had decided to appropriate a few months ago.

Of course, there were some ripples amongst all these idyllic mother-son birthday moments. Like when he got angry with me (because I asked him not to bury my camera in the potted plant in the balcony) and told me that he was taking the birthday present back and stomped off with it to his room. But then he woke up after his afternoon nap and decided that I had been punished enough and magnanimously announced that he wasn't angry with me anymore and that I could have the present back...

The day ended with a lovely dinner that the in-laws treated me to at China Garden, where Ayaan thankfully behaved MUCH better than when Parul, Kiran and I met Sue.

Thanks for the lovely birthday, sweetheart :-)