Birthday boy

On the morning of his birthday, Uta woke up with his right ear beet red and swollen beyond recognition. We were upstate at Grandma's house and the previous evening Uta had squeezed his head between the posts of an old fence to get a closer look at some cows. At the moment there was no visible damage to the ear, no scrapes even, but by morning it was itchy beyond belief, and truly enormous, like one of Dopey's ears from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. On the train ride back down to the city the ear went from bad to worse, developing an oozing puss from the outer rim. I don't like the inexplicable when it comes to Uta's health, so as soon as we got to Grand Central I called his doctor and set up an appointment for later that day (twenty minutes later to be exact). After a mad rush to the lower east side, and a rather brisk visit with the doctor, we still had no answers as to why Uta had morphed into a very good likeness of Dopey. The doctor guessed it was an allergic reaction to something and not an infection and scribbled out a couple prescriptions, one topical and one oral.

When we finally got home it was after three, Uta was exhausted, and more than a little desperate to properly celebrate his birthday. I had hoped to get home the day before in order to make some special birthday arrangements, but aside from a gift stashed, unwrapped, on the top shelf of our closet, I had nothing. But when we opened the door to our apartment we were both blown away. Papa H had assembled a giant birthday greeting out of Legos and carpeted every inch of the floor with a rainbow of balloons. It was like walking into the middle of a field of poppies. Uta waded through the balloons completely awe struck and giddy. It took Uta some time before he believed that Pop could have created such a wonder, for him it was simply magic.