A Very Good 2nd Birthday Celebration August 26, 2007

At the Oregon Zoo…

Then to the playground…

A little chocolate cake for dessert.

The day afterward, he woke up and asked us several times for, “More presents!”

He did a fairly decent job of saying his ABCs the other day. Next… quadratic equations.

My Calzone January 5, 2007

There is only one letter difference between “canzone”, or “song” and “calzone”, as in “huge semi-circle of baked dough stuffed with mozzarella, sausage and whatever else fits”. When Mike handed me my birthday card, I saw he’d inscribed “Il mia calzone” — “My calzone” — on the envelope. A new term of endearment?

We celebrated with dinner at clarklewis. We opted for the chef’s menu, a prix fixe meal that enables you to sample a wide array of menu selections, at the whim of the chef. Despite the humble beginning of two radishes on a plate with a huge dollop of butter and salt (maybe I don’t get out enough to appreciate the complexity of what it represented), overall the meal was vibrant, innovative and delicious, which can be difficult to achieve with a limited winter pantry. Not knowing what dish was coming next was half the fun. Afterward, we went to see the new Pedro Almodovar movie, Volver at Cinema21, which we enjoyed immensely.

For my birthday, Atticus invented a game in which he hides a golf ball under the armchair cushion, then looks at you with an upturned palm as if to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, the ball is no longer in my hands. I have nothing up my sleeves. Where can it be?” Then he retrieves it triumphantly. The Great Houdini. Where does he come up with this stuff?

After watching Atticus do this a few times, Mike took the armchair cushion off and told Atticus to “hide” under the cushion. He loved the “Where’s Atticus?” game, as the pictures indicate below. Happy birthday, indeed.