Happy birthday (to me)

I love my birthday. The date, I mean. When I was younger this wasn't always the case, but since my main frustration was that I had to contend with first semester finals every year instead of celebrating with friends, I've pretty much gotten over it. In fact, I've found that looking forward to my birthday has helped annually with post-Christmas ennui.

This year my family spoiled me with more than a week of special treatment: date nights, alone time, favorite meals, special gifts. I felt surrounded by love and admiration.

Date night my way: Calvin with my parents for the night, Jon and I hit the town for a book store crawl. We hit every book store within cold weather walking distance, then picked up pizza to eat at home on the couch, in pajamas, with a fire and a movie. (books: Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems; Wide Sargasso Sea; Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs Fun Home and Are You My Mother; and Northern Lights, the original British printing of Pullman's Golden Compass). 

I cooked only a handful of times all week, and Jon even made our lunches before he went to work. I got flowers and I spent an afternoon shopping with my mother. The night before my birthday the three of us went to our favorite local dinner spot. My actual birthday we spent at the NAIAS, followed by another favorite dinner.

I feel appreciated, visible, loved, and, I guess, a year older.

photo by Calvin

Birthday

Someone in the house is getting older, and I'm not telling who, but it's someone who's name does not start with C.

We celebrated by trying out the Nul Tasting Room, kin to our favorite downtown restaurant: Jolly Pumpkin. It's beer, of course, and Nul is the tasting room for three great Michigan craft breweries. They also happen to be within walking distance from our house. Not that we walked on this occasion, mind you. It is chilly out there, after all.

We loved it, by the way.

Independence weekend in Chicago

(A photo essay)

Turning eight

And then he was eight. It happened so fast, and I'm so far behind, that I haven't written his letter yet, but it's coming eventually, I promise.

In our family we have a tradition of celebrating birthday weeks. Why? Because a birthday doesn't always fall on a convenient day, or sometimes people just have bad days, or sometimes people are under the weather. Having only one day to celebrate all year long seems hardly fair. So in our house the celebrant gets a whole week of lighter chores, their choice of extra activities, and their choice of meals. It's well earned on the other 51 weeks of the year.

On his actual birthday, our newly minted eight year old chose dinner at Real Seafood Co. so he could have crab legs. The day before found us at the Food Gatherers fund raiser dinner, and the rest of the week consisted of various combinations of tacos (shrimp tacos, chicken tacos, and beef tacos). On the final day of his birthday week he had the whole family over for grilled salmon and salad and games in the yard. We took cookies to homsechool group, cupcakes to nature group, and made strawberry shortcake with family.

Perhaps it is a sign of his maturation that he had only a limited birthday list this year. Prior lists have been longer than the number of party guests, and at times audacious in request. This year's list included one outdoorsman's knife, and three different books. Without wanting to encourage greed, I asked him a couple of times, in subtle ways, if he was sure his list was complete. The upside, of course, is that he got eveything he asked for, plus some great art supplies and a totally awesome wizard's hat to go with his cloak, and was completely and utterly pleased.

And then the birthday, and the birthweek, were past, and what we had left was an eight year old. An eight-year-old in a wizard's costume with an outdoorsman's knife.

March, come and gone

How about a quick run-down of the month of March, which came and went with a speed so determined that it left us all wondering where the fire was. In fact, I'm not sure I noticed that March was gone before the first days of May had arrived. What, then, happened to fair April? Part of my confusion might be the odd weather of this year that is delivering April showers at the beginning of May. Part of it was our run-in with tag team illnesses—flu here, flu there, a cold, Strep Throat. But the biggest part of March's sneaking right by was a schedule that just wouldn't let up.

We celebrated a birthday

We kept up with school

We took a salsa class with our homeschool group

We braved the still cold and snowy weather to spend a delightful day in town

We played a lot of games, and tried to encourage spring to begin.