Isaac's birthday "celebration"

Poppop drove up Friday to join the birthday festivities, and perhaps in part to reclaim his Meemaw. We worked his butt off, too. He helped Daddy install a new stair rail and helped me clean the house and wrangle babies. He is doing so much better with his gimpy ankle -- neither his boot nor his cane made an appearance the whole time he was here -- though at the end of each day it was more swollen than Aunt Jean's.

Saturday night he took us out for our traditional birthday dinner at Red Robin.



In the car ride over, we gave Isaac the choice of eating instead at a restaurant where there's food he'll actually consume, such as Bob Evans. He told us no, that "I want to celebrate my birthday at Red Robin." We told him he could get an ice cream sundae at Bob Evans, but he let us know that the fanfare about it there doesn't quite meet his birthday standards.

And truly, all he cared about was the celebration he knew was coming. He sat, so patient and very quiet, perhaps eating a splinter of chicken nugget every so often, while his brother screamed and fussed and wrestled like the two-year-old he recently discovered himself to be. Daddy came up with the best tactic of Jakey distraction while we waited for our food and then Isaac's birthday song.



Finally it came, his rowdy birthday serenade. The Red Robin punks didn't ask his name or how old he was; they just plopped his sundae down and burst into song. But Isaac could have cared less -- it was what he wanted all along. You can see him flashing me an almost-invisible thumbs-up at the start.