What a happy birthday boy we have!

We took him shopping at Target yesterday. At the end of an aisle was a wall of Matchbox vehicles. He started shouting and pointing, "That one! That one! No, no, not that one. THAT one!" So we began to pull them off per his precise instructions and hand them to him. He would gaze at each one through the plastic cover, enthralled. This was at least a ten-to-fifteen-minute process, picking and choosing, evaluating, putting some back and getting others, then convincing him to let us place them in the back of the cart and that maybe he'd get them as surprises at his party. He picked out some helicopters, too, and some military vehicles. It was quite a masculine outing. I'd never spent that much time in those aisles ever before.

One of his sisters wrapped each one of the cars, so he'd have a lot of presents to unwrap at the party. Believe it or not, he didn't rip into them. Instead, he carefully unwrapped each one, grinning as the paper started to reveal the packaging. Then he'd exclaim, "Wow! I LOVE it!" delighting and "wow-ing" over it, elated. He'd unwrap another, as if he didn't know what it would be, then: "OH! Oh! I LIKE this one!!" It was getting ridiculously Pollyannalike, but so charming.

His thrill over every dinky gift prompted my sister-in-law to lean over during the hubbub and suggest, "Okay, tell the truth. These are the first presents you've ever bought him, aren't they!" What kid could sustain ongoing astonishment over ten individually wrapped 94-cent cars? One who truly only wanted a few 94-cent cars, I guess.

Oh, that we were all so easily satisfied, let alone ecstatic!