“Bite?” That was Kylie’s request when she saw that I had a piece of birthday cake, and all she had was a hunk of cookie. Well, you can’t resist that, can you? So I put a small bit of chocolate cake on a fork and let her have her bite. The cake must have been good, because the next think I knew, she and Aiden had each commandeered a fork, and Aiden had swiped all my frosting. Kylie had a little more trouble cutting a bite-sized piece of cake off, so she stabbed the whole thing and had it on the way to her mouth before we stopped her.

And that’s how I celebrated my belated birthday with Tammy and David and the babies. (We still call them “the babies,” even though they are both, in fact, toddlers. Aiden is two and a half, and Kylie is one and a half.) They had all been out of town on my actual birthday, but we managed to tuck one last celebration into my birthday week. It was a last-minute invitation to meet them for dinner, so of course I left the house without remembering my camera. Sorry.

Aiden greeted me with a cheery hello and a happy birthday, then announced, “I’m going to have a monster truck birthday.” His birthday isn’t until June, but he likes to get the planning done early. He gets that from his mama. I asked if I was invited, and he said, “Yes, you can come to my birthday.” I’m lucky, because apparently he has sketched out his entire guest list somewhere in the back of that overcrowded mind. I’m glad to be included.

Kylie was a little chatterbox, too, and she was intensely interested in everything around her. When we sat down at the table, she immediately picked up a little packet of Sweet and Low and shook it, then handed it to me. She wanted a napkin from the dispenser, so I gave her one. She pretended to blow her nose on it, then handed it to her daddy and took another one. She would have used up every napkin in the restaurant if we hadn’t moved them out of her perimeter.

She wanted to try out all the dipping sauces on everything she ate. The mustard on her French fries was okay, but she also dipped her ice in the catsup. She was munching on a massive dill pickle and dipping it in the pickle relish (what else?). She pointed to the pickle on my plate and said, “Pickle.” I agreed with her and would have offered it to her, but she was only one bite into her own pickle at the time.

Between the two of them I didn’t get to eat much of my birthday cake, but it was more fun to share anyway.

After the week I had, I really needed this interlude tonight. A little dose of the tiniest members of the family is always a tonic in the direst of times. I got sweet hugs from both of them, and it made up for a lot of the grief I’ve been going through lately. Next time I’ll try to remember the camera, though.