Birthday season

Helen, who is nearly three and a half, has been somewhat obsessed over the last few weeks with talking about when people's birthdays are. She was asking over and over again when each person's birthday is, but for the last week or so, she's just been informing us over and over again, although usually just of the month, not the day. We've gotten a few really funny conversations out of this, too, such as last week when she proudly informed Jörn that her birthday is "in September thith." Jörn said, "Ja, das weiss ich." ("Yes, I know.") I then added, "You know why Papa knows? Because he was there!" Helen opened her already very big eyes even wider and said, "Oh!" And then I said, "You know what? I was there, too!" To which, with EVEN wider eyes, Helen said, "Wow! That was very nice of you, Mommy!" Just for the record, yes, we HAVE explained that she grew inside of me, and also that a birthday is remembering the day that the baby came out, but it still seemed quite a revelation to her that her parents were present at her birth.

So. The children's birthdays are all fairly close together, with three in June, one in July, and two in September. We've had a sort of policy for quite awhile now that we don't start planning anyone's birthday party until the previous birthday is over with. I think we might have to relax on that a little bit in June, though, as there are eight days between the first two birthdays and then ten more days to the third one. This "policy" doesn't, by any means, stop any of the children from talking about what they want for their birthday, what they want to do, what they want to eat, what the cake should be, etc. Katie's the main one doing this all the time, in fact, she started planning her seventh birthday BEFORE her sixth birthday last year, because not everything she was planning would fit in one birthday. But it does mean that I don't have to commit to anything. I don't know what we're doing to celebrate her birthday this year, but it's a good guess that her party won't be on the day, as she will be spending the day in an airplane. (Along with Helen, Elisabeth, and me--just the four of us are going to Germany for a week, but that's another topic.) But I am NOT planning it until Lukas's birthday, which is a full 33 days earlier, is over with!

Since Katie talks about it a LOT, we remind her fairly often that there are other birthdays to get through first, and I suspect that it's because she recites them so often that Helen has gotten interested. "First Mommy's, and then Papa's, then Jacob's, Elisabeth's, and Lukas's, and then MINE! And then Helen's and Marie's. And then Christmas and then we start over!" Every time she says that, I just agree with her and leave it at that, but every time she says it, I'm thinking inside that no, my birthday is NOT the first birthday of the year.

The first birthday of the year in our family is today, but it's one of those birthdays that nobody celebrates, because it's also the same person's deathday. And I'm sitting here on a sunny Saturday morning writing about this, smiling and laughing with any children who come bouncing through the living room, knowing that none of them even know the date (although the two oldest do remember the event, and all of them know about it), nor does my husband remember, and that it won't do anybody any good to be miserable. I suppose, in a way, I AM "celebrating." I'm certainly remembering, and writing it down here so it won't be forgotten, but I'm also celebrating the life exuded by the children I have here.

Birthday season officially opens here with my birthday next month, and the concentrated, stressful birthday season opens in June. But for me, the list will always go: T, Mommy, C, Jörn, Jacob, Elisabeth, Lukas, A's due date, Katie, Helen, T's due date, Marie, C's due date, A. And then Christmas and then we start again.

I think it's pretty cool that, although we repeat months rather a lot, we don't have a single day of the month the same. With 11 people and 14 dates (if I add in the due dates of the three babies we lost), we have 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, and 25. I know it's silly, but I like that fact. When I remember (which isn't always), I sing a silly little "Happy Birthday" on the day each month to each of the children. Okay, so that doesn't work in Greek or Spanish or French or probably a whole bunch of other languages, but in English (and German), the word "birthDAY" doesn't implicitly refer only to the (yearly) ANNIversary, even if that's how we generally understand and use the word, so I'm happy to reappropriate it.

Either way, I'm not really singing "Happy Birthday" to T today.

Marie's 14th birthday

Poor Marie--she's been 14 years old for over three weeks, and I still haven't blogged about it! For that matter, although I'd uploaded (and backed up to my external hard-drive) all the photos between Helen's birthday and last Saturday, I hadn't even LOOKED at those photos yet! However, now that I have, I'm pleased to post them here. We didn't go overboard with photos of Marie's birthday--too busy having fun, I guess. (Yes, the younger children's birthdays are fun, but I'm more an observer than a participater, so take a lot of photos...)

Marie had originally hoped to have a sleep-over, but far too many events were coinciding to find a possible date within a reasonable length of time from her actual birthday. So she settled on a pizza party at home, the evening before her actual birthday.

With store-bought pitta breads and a bunch of prepared toppings, everyone created his or her (the only "he"s present being Marie's male siblings and parent) own pizza, which was much enjoyed by all. It did amuse me to have one of the girls compliment me on my "cooking" on Facebook, referring to the pizza she'd had at our house, considering that I had NOTHING whatseover to do with them! Okay, so I kept the smaller children away while my husband cut up vegetables for toppings. That was about it. And I did make my own pizza, of course. But didn't take a photo of it, or anyone else's.

I did, however, bake and decorate the cake. True to my usual style, it wasn't finished until well after the guests had arrived, but at least it was finished before dinner. (Oh, and that would be another reason I wasn't taking photos...I was in the kitchen decorating the cake.)

Marie's been playing the violin for five years, and is quite good. I didn't even like violin music much before she started playing and I tried to discourage her from starting lessons. I told her she had to learn piano (from me) first, and that then she had to practice every single day for a month, without being reminded, before I'd even put her on the waiting list for violin lessons at the city music school in Mülheim, Germany, where we lived at the time. She did it. Then I hoped that the waiting list really was as long as they said, but she got in within a couple of months. Much to my surprise, however, she wasn't squeaky at all, even at the beginning, and now I love listening to her play. Anyway, so much to the theme of the cake. I guess I'm making up for lack of photos by rambling.

Fourteen candles is a LOT of candles to light. One of them turned out to be a trick candle, which kept appearing to be out but then re-lit itself when she blew them out. (Yes, I re-use birthday candles. They're all in a big jar and I just mix and match. Or not match, as the case may be, because I'm not coordinated like that.) I think we'll be going with the rule that as of 18 (or maybe after 18?) the birthday person no longer gets the correlating number of candles for his or her age.

On Marie's actual birthday, September 22nd, Jacob made her a jelly roll (Swiss roll), and this time she only got two candles, and one of them was even a new one, straight from the package. The "4" was left over from my last birthday.

Happy birthday, to my first baby forever, no matter how old she gets!

Helen's third birthday

Wow--here it is only five days after the fact, and I'm already blogging about Helen's birthday! For the same story from a different point of view, check out Sue's blog.

Although I didn't manage to remember with any of the other children this year, I did remember to get the semi-traditional "day before" photo of Helen, still two. Actually, she'd been telling everyone for the last six months that she's "two and a half" and resisted all efforts to correct the math, but for the last few weeks, did happily tell people that she was going to turn three.

And here's Helen three at last:

In the early afternoon, our friends Dena and Joseph (known to Helen as "Jo-fess") came over to give Helen a present. She was happy to cuddle with them, but didn't want to open her present, so it got put on top of the piano to be opened with the other presents.

Here's a not-at-all-organized collage (I've been having fun with picasa!) of the gift-opening. A Guatemalen bear backpack from my parents (inspiring another round of "Backpack was a little bear, little bear, little bear!" learned from Starfall...), a card with stickers and such from Margaret and Phil in Germany, fishing game from Dena and Joseph, and of course the presents from the guests and her siblings. There were officially only two guests: Aimee and Sue. Aimee will be three in October and came with her "bodyguards" (so we call them, as Helen is rather larger and rougher than Aimee), her three older brothers and both parents. And Sue of course came with her husband, Richard. Our downstairs guest also joined us for the party, so we were 17 people altogether, which isn't bad for only inviting two! (Nobody gate-crashed or was unwelcomed by Helen, it was just that Aimee and Sue were the only "official" guests.)

The cat, of which I don't have a good photo but Sue does (taken by Helen!), was crocheted by Marie. Not sure why Sue is getting the hug, except that Helen often needs to randomly stop and exchange cuddles with Sue.

Dinner for everybody, and finally the cake. As of their third birthdays, the children get to request whatever they want on their birthday cake, and I do my best to make it. Lukas and Katie in particular had been trying to give Helen ideas for months, but it was always easy to tell when the idea wasn't Helen's. I finally got Helen on her own and asked her what she would like on her cake. She first told me she wanted a camel and wanted her birthday at the Camel Park, but when I asked her where she got that idea, she said, "Lukas said it to me very quietly in my ear like this," and then whispered in my ear. So I asked again what SHE would like on her cake, and she said, "Mmmm...white and brown cake." I said, "You would like a chocolate and vanilla cake?" "Yes, for my birthday when I'm going to turn three!" I tried again and asked if she would like a picture from a book, and she thought about it some more and said, "Hmmmm...yes! A roof!" I did hear the sounds, but wasn't sure what they meant, and repeated, "A roof?" "Yes, a roof. With a hippo-hoppamus. Eating special cake." We don't actually have this book, but Sue does, and she has read it to Helen MANY times, and for that matter, I've read it to Helen a fair number of times myself.

So...here is the hippo-hoppamus on a roof, eating special cake. The "cake", incidentally, is dried, candied mango! But the cake underneath the frosting is indeed chocolate and vanilla.

And here is a photo of the book cover, and a photo of the two-page spread with the exact picture Helen requested:

Our oven, by the way, had quit a week earlier, so I baked the cake in Sue's oven that morning. (We did get a new oven the next day.) When I took it out of the oven, Helen said, quite quietly for her, "Is that my birthday cake?" When I said yes, she said, even more quietly, if possible, "Are you going to make me another one?" I said no, this was her cake, just like she wanted, with chocolate and vanilla. (I put half of the batter in, added chocolate to the second half, and poured it sort of on top, sort of swirled.) Then her lip quivered just a bit as she said even MORE quietly, "But I want a hippo-hoppamus on my cake." Poor Helen! I explained that I would decorate it later when it cooled down, and she was happy again.

And so, a final photo of Helen admiring her cake. With a roof. With a hippo-hoppamus. Eating special cake.

Katie's sixth birthday

And now we have...September. Two more birthdays coming up, so I thought I'd better blog about Katie's, first, which was at the end of July!

We very often remember to take a photo of the birthday child the day before his or her birthday, holding up the number of fingers they "still are", then one the next day with the new number. Jacob's birthday was first, and it's hard to hold up either 11 or 12 fingers. Then came Elisabeth's, who wasn't willing to hold up one finger for the camera, either. The day before Lukas's birthday he got (ahem...) sent to bed early and I forgot to take a photo. So I figure that the tradition just doesn't have to happen this year, and we didn't get a photo of Katie holding up five fingers. However, on the morning of her birthday, she suddenly remembered and requested a photo of herself with six fingers. Only when I uploaded the photos to the computer did I notice that her hair hadn't been brushed yet...

Katie is very into all things Pink and all things Princess, so requested a "pin-the-tiara-on-the-princess" game at her party. I traced her and she colored herself in, as a princess.

For her cake she wanted a tiara. Not a crown, a tiara. She explained the difference to me, that on a tiara, the sides of the points swoop. I thought maybe I hadn't swooped them quite enough, but she was pleased with the cake, even if everyone else did think it was a crown. The background, incidentally, which looks purple in this photo, was actually pink, colored with homemade strawberry jam, which was yummy and I'll happily do again.

As the children arrived, they were given two tiaras each to color--one on cardboard (the back of cereal boxes) to wear, and one for taping on the princess later on. Here is the princess with her choice of tiaras.

Katie wearing her crown (I mean...tiara...although the sides don't swoop enough...), holding the plant that Lukas gave her.

Considering that there were 14 children in the house (two families total...her guests consisted of one family with eight children, and one family of adults, plus of course the eight of us and one houseguest), and that this was Katie's birthday, they played some amazingly quiet games. I think this was when they were playing a sleeping game, something I was more than happy to encourage!

Opening her gift from my parents, a little Guatemalen purse.

A book I love and have given to many six-year-olds over the years, "Now We are Six" by A.A. Milne. (We now have three copies in the house, as Marie, Katie, and I each have our own copies. Since neither Jacob nor Lukas could read when they were six, I guess that's why it didn't occur to me to give them their own copies...)

We picked up these wedding crowns months ago at the thrift store for a couple of Euros. Apparently, they're traditionally used for the bridal couple in Cypriot weddings and can cost at least 20 or 30 times what we paid. The two circlets were originally joined by a long ribbon, but we cut them apart.

More books.

This was definitely the hands-down favorite gift in Katie's eyes...

Somehow I didn't take all that many photos. Here's Sue's blogpost about the party, with more photos.

Lukas's ninth birthday

Lukas's ninth birthday this year fell on a Tuesday (June 21st), which happened to be the easiest day for Jörn to take off of work. Lukas kept asking about going to a water park (Water World, I think?), which to me seemed a bit silly when we've got the whole Mediterranean, but I did look it up on-line. It didn't take long for me to decide that no way were we going to drive an hour to hand over half of our food budget for a month to spend all day in the hot sun eating junk food. (They don't allow people to bring in their own picnics, or even water bottles!) Then Jacob suggested the Camel Park, which is only about 20 minutes away, considerably more affordable, and something that people had been recommending for awhile. We phoned to ask about picnics and were told that we could take our own picnic only if we paid for camel rides and went on a weekday. Perfect.

First, though, Lukas opened a few presents at home. Here, a hat and some books from the F family:

A wallet from Guatemala from my parents:

A cool plastic light-up flying thing from Jacob.

A shovel from Katie.

Acrylic paints from Papa.

Chocolate from Angie.

Then we finally packed our picnic and our swimsuits and two of Lukas's friends and ourselves into the cars and headed for Mazotos.

Jacob greets a camel.

Angie, Jed, Katie, and Elisabeth waited in the shade while the rest of us had our camel rides, four camels in a row. Jacob and Marie were on the first one, Jörn on the next one by himself, Helen and I on the third, and Lukas and Ryan on the last one. No photos of me because I was the one with the camera, and we declined to pay some outrageous amount for a photo afterwards. (I did look at them, and if there'd been one good one that included all of us, I just might have splurged, but happily, there wasn't.)

This is the head of the last camel, which kept coming VERY close to my right leg and making Helen extremely nervous.

After the camel rides, we pretty much headed straight for the swimming pool, where we spent most of the rest of the day. It had SHADE, and it had GRASS, two very cool things. This was Elisabeth's first ever time on grass, and she found it very interesting.

The website does say how much the camel rides, swimming pool, and entrance cost, but doesn't mention that you have to pay for practically every other attraction, as well, such as the bouncy castle and air hockey table and so on. My children knew better than to even ask, but Lukas did use his own money to ride the "wild bull".

We didn't have to pay to walk past the crazy mirrors, either. This one cracked me up so much that I had to take a photo of it, although it's actually pretty eery:

Swings were free, too.

Lukas's "cake" was by far the easiest one ever: he wanted lemon muffins with gummy sharks. So that's what he got!

Lighting birthday candles outdoors is never easy--it's always a matter of trying to keep them lit long enough for the birthday-child to blow them out! The towel is a windbreak.



Marie, Jed, Katie, Lukas, Jacob, Ryan


The usual rule if a child chooses an outing instead of a birthday party at home is that one guest may be invited. Lukas's best friends being twins meant that Lukas, and they, lucked out. :-) (Ryan and Jed are less than a year older than Lukas, but they're big for their age and Lukas is small for his!)

Back at home Lukas asked me to take a photo of him with all of his presents, and specifically requested that I include it on the blog and mention the dinosaur nest, which Marie crocheted for him to go along with the dinosaur she crocheted for his birthday last year. He's hoping for eggs for Christmas and baby dinosaurs next year.

A couple of days later Lukas was able to open the card from Margaret and Phil, and was thrilled to pieces with the first birthday money he'd ever received in his life.