The Bub in the Belly

Ryan loves to pretend that he's a mouse. He will insist that I address him as a mouse, and he will squeak like a mouse to respond. It's been going on for some time now. Before this, he was a worm. I don't know why he doesn't choose more exciting animals, but there you have it. Anyway, a mouse is good. There's Mickey Mouse, Jerry the mouse (from Tom and Jerry), the mouse from the tale of The Gruffalo, etc. Plus Ryan was born in the year of the Rat, so he really is a mouse.

Anyway, one day in January, I told him that I'd make him a tail. I wasn't thinking of his mouse persona actually; I just thought that having a tail would be fun. He was very excited at the idea and so I started planning and researching on how to make it happen.

Around the same time, Richard and I were discussing how best to celebrate our little love's birthday. Initially we planned just to take the day off work/school and spend the day with him. The week before his birthday, however, his teachers asked us if we would have a celebration in school. They said that his birthday was the only one around that period and it would be lovely for the children to have a celebration together with some chocolate cake with sprinkles on top. Of course we said yes, which meant a little change to our plans was required - Ryan had to go to school after all and we had to get a big birthday cake!

We still wanted to spend the day with Ryan so we arranged with the teachers to have the celebration around noon after which Ryan would leave early with us. When I was discussing the party plans with Ryan's teacher, she told me that if I was planning on bringing goodie bags, I needed to make sure that they did not contain nuts. I told her that I had not decided to give out any goodies at all but, if I did give out any goodies, they wouldn't be sweets or nuts or anything like that. She was so grateful to hear that - so take that as a tip for parents: the school is not enthusiastic about parents distributing food, unless it's chocolate cake!

Actually I wanted to bring in the cake, do a quick song, blow out the candles, cut and eat, and get ourselves out of there to enjoy the rest of the day. I had no plans to give out any goodie bags. But our discussion got my creative juices flowing and, coupled with the tail discussion I was having with Ryan at the time, I decided to make tails for everyone!

Ryan's tail was the first one I made. It's actually the prototype but when I asked him to try it on, he absolutely loved it and refused to take it off the entire day. And of course, he calls it his "mouse tail", even though I don't know of any mouse with a tail like this.