Happy 9th, I mean 7th Birthday

Today Peter officially turned 9 and we celebrated his 7th birthday. If this doesn't make sense, see the post entitled "Peter, Peter, How Old Art Thou?" Anyway, today we celebrated Peter's 7th Birthday. The celebrating started early since last night we put balloons and noise makers in his bedroom while he was sleeping. He came downstairs this morning in full party gear... party hat, pajamas, balloons and noisemaker. The day he had been waiting for had finally arrived. (He had been counting down the days on the calendar till his birthday ever since we did a calendar unit in school a month ago. A big party hat sticker has been his focus on the calender ever since.)

The day started with candles on his fried eggs and Mom giving 7 birthday hugs and 7 birthday kisses. He had the biggest, silliest grin at this. I then sent him up to the shower to get cleaned up so we could go have his picture taken. He did really well at these, although, as fate would have it, his hair would not lay down in back (He normally doesn't have a problem with hair standing straight up but today he sure did.) While we were out, we picked up stuff to make his cake. Back at home we made up his cake and had a shortened school day. We did get to read Happy Birthday Biscuit and Curious Geore and the Birthday Surprise , two of his favorite storybook characters. Kim then read бабушкин суп по субботам. (Her Russian reading has really declined... yet another unwritten post.) Then downstairs for some language arts and math. All the while a stack of presents on the dining room table kept Peter's attention. He asked once about being able to open them but did really well at waiting, once it was explained that he had to wait until Beth and Luke made it home from school and Dad was home from work. Finally everyone was home and he got to rip into them. After which it was off to McDonald's, after all if you are offered anything you want to eat for your birthday dinner what could be better? That evening Beth had her Middle School Band Concert so we went and enjoyed the music. (Sorry about the dark picture the flash on my little camera didn't reach the stage. Hopefully the video came out better. I haven't even looked at it yet.)

Finally it was cake time with "Mama's cars" racing across the cake. He kept trying to convince me that they should be his new cars since they were on his birthday cake. After all, Spiderman was even in one of the cars. In the end I "agreed" to his logic and reluctantly gave up "my" cars.

After singing Happy Birthday, Peter blew out the candles. He was so reved up about it he couldn't get a big enough/focused enough blow to get them out in one try. He kept blowing and got them all out. He didn't even need the trick candles we put on Kim's cake. He was beaming the whole time.

Then it was time to cut the cake, one of the things that we let the birthday kid do is cut their own first piece of cake. You should have seen his eyes when I handed him the "Big" knife. He didn't want to take it and politely asked me in English to cut the cake for him. I did make sure that he got the first piece. Then off to bed for the close of his very first American birthday. I think he is already thinking about his next one.