{"id":1569,"date":"2008-03-28T10:25:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T10:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/austenandgage.com\/happy-birthday-dada"},"modified":"2008-03-28T10:25:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-28T10:25:00","slug":"happy-birthday-dada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/?p=1569","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Dada!"},"content":{"rendered":"

All day Mama and Austen discussed the fact that it was Dada’s birthday. They practiced singing “Happy Birthday to you…” many times, discussed blowing out candles and eating birthday cake, and went shopping for birthday gifts. For a while Austen insisted it was in fact HER birthday today and wanted “Happy Birthday” sung to her, but eventually she got on board and practiced singing the song “… dear Dada.” <\/p>\n

All this talk of birth gave Mama the chance to talk about her mom, who Austen correctly identified as “Grandma Judi,” and Dada’s mom, “Grandma Mindi.” Mama also told Austen that Grandma Judi died. Austen reacted kinda strongly to this: wide eyes and an open mouth. She’s started to understand the concept of death, discussing Neely Fish’s and Scout’s and Nietzsche’s passings. Mama told Austen that she gets very sad when she thinks of Grandma Judi’s death, and Austen was sympathetic, “You got sad?” Mama tried to stay positive and return to the topic of parentage — which paid off; later that day, Austen repeated what she’d learned for Dada.<\/p>\n

When Dada got home from work (in the white car), he was greeted outside by Mama and Austen, who were tossing a ball around. Inside, they gave him his gifts: a tool belt and billiard supplies (rack, set of balls and a cue). The three went to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse in Piscataway, topped off with huge chocolate cake for dessert. Austen helped blow out the “candle.” She’d been anticipating this all day. The rituals of birthday celebration are so much fun when there’s a burgeoning toddler around.<\/p>\n

L.L.F.R.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All day Mama and Austen discussed the fact that it was Dada’s birthday. They practiced singing “Happy Birthday to you…” many times, discussed blowing out candles and eating birthday cake, and went shopping for birthday gifts. For a while Austen …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/austenandgage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}