A Sprinkle of Necklace Music

Charlie’s birthday was Tuesday, with a small party at school and sushi at a restaurant, a change for him as he is used to sushi purchased from the grocery store and arrayed inside a plastic container. We have a lot to celebrate these days—Charlie is able to handle unexpected situations; after a lot of struggle, Charlie is truly a happy boy who is happy to go to school and to be there (as I noted when I observed his classroom on Wednesday). Jim and I have tacitly decided to celebrate his birthday all week long and Saturday brings a train trip to Philadelphia to see some good friends.

I think Charlie knew the celebrating was really on when I made his birthday cupcakes on Monday evening. I mixed up the batter (Charlie stirred it some) and showed him the pages for cupcakes in the visual recipe cookbook (a gift from my parents). Soon as I took the pan out of the oven, Charlie ran over and picked up one very hot cupcake, and snuck in some sprinkles “straight” while I creamed margarine and powdered sugar for the frosting (which, once mixed, became the stuff of more snuck tastings). As I was cleaning up, Charlie picked up the pan of cupcakes and started to walk towards the stairs with them; when I called out to let them cool in the kitchen, he placed them back on the counter, his face distraught.

“Ok, ok, you can take them downstairs,” I said. Charlie grinned and ran down with the pan and then came back up and looked at the pot with the frosting. “Give, Mom,” he said, and what he wanted was exactly clear, and so Charlie celebrated the eye of his tenth birthday very happily, with the cupcakes, the frosting, formerly-my-now-his iPod, his big blue blanket, and a few other things, on his bed. I set the pan and the pot on the floor by as he was going to sleep, and took everything upstairs to the kitchen for the final frosting and dusting with sprinkles at 2am.

By that time the cupcakes had cooled off and I had finished writing a final exam for my Roman law and politics class. The exam was at 9.00am and maybe that was one reason why this brain-teasing illusion—multicolored and very “neuro” (as in neurology and neuroscience)—was, well, on my mind on Tuesday.

For something somewhat less disorienting—-and more useful from the perspective of a mother ever seeking to cultivate her child’s mouse-using skills—-try out necklace music which contains lights, music and color in all the colors of the sprinkles that signaled “birthday!” to my birthday boy.