For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.

Happy birthday, my sweet Segundo.

Things he’s told me he hopes to accomplish now that he’s three:
1. Poop on the potty
2. Watch more hockey
3. Learn to put on his own socks

Today is his actual, real birthday (in our house it’s called a cupcake birthday because your real birthday is when you have a nice dinner with your immediate family, open the presents from them, and have cupcakes).

Tomorrow is his party with the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins – with a menu of his choice for the kids (macaroni and cheese and grapes) and baked ziti for the grown-ups and a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake. Games are planned; bathrooms are cleaned; Mama bakes the cake this evening.

His birthday loot from us and his brothers: the Polar Express train and the hot chocolate car for his train set (bought on sale after Christmas); a color-in-your-own jigsaw puzzle (Seggie is a jigsaw puzzle whiz and can put together a 50+ piece puzzle by himself); an Elmo coloring book; an animal stencil set; a Pittsburgh Penguins T-shirt with Sidney Crosby’s name and number on the back; one of those polar fleece blankets you make by knotting the edges of the fabric together - one side is blue, one side is covered in little hockey players. I think he will be pleased.

I am stopping for Chinese on the way home so the boys can snarf down steamed dumplings, and I stopped at our favorite bakery on the way to work this morning and bought chocolate cupcakes with white icing and sprinkles for dessert. It’s going to be a good time!

Segundo is my sweet boy. He is *such* a sweetheart. He is well-mannered: “Peez may me haff some chocolate milk?” He tells me, even when I clearly do not, that I “look pitty.” He at random times announces to the world in general that “Mama is a librarian. Mama, you is a librarian!” He loves vegetables, and asks me to buy broccoli and green beans and banana yogurts at the grocery store; but also chocolate milk, fruit snacks, and donuts. He is very particular about what he wears and sometimes changes his clothes three times a day. His favorite shirt is a grey turtleneck with a red stripe across the chest that his Uncle C gave him for Christmas; he notes this each time he wears it. He loves sports and looks at the sports page of the newspaper every morning after breakfast, hoping to find photos of the Steelers or his favorite Penguins. He likes trucks and buses and trains and construction vehicles – and water towers. He likes to play hockey and baseball; he is also a willing Annie/Ringo/Piglet/whichever-secondary-character Primo needs him to play in their playacting. He sleeps sprawled flat on his back, arms flung out, and does not like the cat to be on the bed with him. He still naps everyday and often will put himself down for a nap: “Me tired. Me going to bed.” Mimi must sleep with him, as well as Lucy, the doll we bought at a yard sale, and the newest baby, an old Madame Alexander doll of mine who is supposed to be Beth from Little Women but whom he has christened Valerie. His blond hair sticks out everywhere, and his front right tooth has a chip in it from where he fell on the pavement in a parking lot once, and his eyes are a beautiful clear ice blue. He is a charmer, and will have girls falling all over him very soon. He is mostly easy-going, incredibly affectionate, very empathetic, and is really coming into his own intellectually. He has absolutely no volume control on his voice – everything is said at shouting level, which drives me bananas. But he’s such a good little guy that I feel awful for being snappish with him - he looks at me solemnly and asks, “Mama, is you grumpy today?”

I found out I was pregnant with Seggie shortly after an alcohol-saturated weekend at the shore with some girlfriends. That, combined with the triathlon I insisted on completing while ten weeks pregnant, against all my better judgment (because I am a twit), had me worried throughout the entire pregnancy that there would be something wrong with him. There wasn't - he was perfect in every single way.

I don’t even really remember much of labor with him – I do remember hemming the curtains for his room in between contractions, and that my water broke at about eleven p.m., and that we got rear-ended on the way to the hospital. But once we got there and I got my epidural, I went to sleep, woke up in the morning, pushed for fifteen minutes, and plurp, out he came.

He is named in honor of John Lennon, and after his father, and after his paternal grandfather – the boy with three names. We weren’t sure if we were going to have a third at that point, so figured we’d better get them all in. So his third name and his little brother’s first name are the same.

Much of his babyhood also is a blur, as I gave birth to him two weeks before the end of my second semester of graduate school. I took the summer off, but as I was still taking one online course, had babysitters – twin sisters – who came over two afternoons a week to watch him so I could disappear into the attic and frantically work for three hours. Whereas Primo did not go to daycare until he was almost one, Seggie was in daycare twice a week by five months, so I could finish graduate school. I feel badly that so much of his babyhood is a blur, but on the other hand, he may have benefited from my not being so overprotective and neurotic. And he is my one child who would not hold this against me.

Primo’s favorite story to tell about Seggie being a baby: Primo hit his head on the dining room table. In my hurry to get to him in the other room, I picked up the car seat in which six-week-old Seggie was sleeping (UNBUCKLED, idiot me), and didn’t even realize he’d fallen *out* of the car seat until I TRIPPED OVER HIM. So we got a twofer at the emergency room and I waited with a heavy heart for the doctor to tell me he was calling CYS, which of course he did not.

Happy birthday, sweet little Segundo. The day you came into my life was one of the happiest ever. And you continue to make my life happy and delightful (and exasperating, let’s not sugar-coat everything) in so so many ways, every single day.