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Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Birthday privileges

Somewhere or other I squirreled away our camera and on it are the pictures from my birthday. But I'm not sure where it is at the moment, and also I needed to install a program to edit pictures (or at least make my pictures the right size) on this old laptop, so for the time being we'll have picture-less posts.

Lucky for you there are plenty of pictures on my mom's blog. She took all five of my kids out—by herself—to Thanksgiving Point for a day of adventure while Andrew and I spent the day furiously packing. And then at the end of the day she had us over for dinner.

I told her that if I had been the one to take all five kids to Thanksgiving Point by myself, it would certainly be a day that I would not want to come home and make dinner! But she had dinner ready for us when we arrived at her house—perogies, yum!—and a lovely carrot cake that she bought at the store (and that had so much frosting on it)!

When it came time to say the blessing on the food, Zoë thought that I should be the one to say the prayer, and said as much, but my dad didn't hear her and asked Miriam to say the prayer. So Miriam said the prayer and Zoë, who did a very good job at controlling her temper, passive-aggressively apologized to me after the prayer (I think deep down inside she wanted to get really angry with my dad for not having me say the prayer, but she also knows that she's not supposed to throw fits about everything, so a passive-aggressive jab it was).

"I'm sorry you didn't get to say the prayer on your birthday, Mommy!" she said. "We should always get to say the prayer on our birthdays but instead Miriam prayed. And that's just too bad because it's your birthday!"

She has apologized to me (less passive-aggressively, since my dad's no longer within earshot to benefit from her derisive tone, I suppose) several times since then. She feels very strongly about this.

We have a longstanding (and, our older girls might add, annoying) tradition of celebrating every last and first thing someone does on their birthday (and also at the New Year and also sometimes when the month changes, just for kicks).

"It's the last prayer we'll hear from three-year-old Zoë," we might say the night before her birthday. "The last time we get to tuck three-year-old Zoë in. The very last hug and kiss for three-year-old Zoë."

And then on her birthday we'd shower her with, "It's four-year-old Zoë! Her first four-year-old breakfast! Her first four-year-old breakfast prayer! Her first time brushing her hair as a four-year-old!"

You get the picture, I'm sure. Zoë is all over this sort of thing. Rachel...is a little bit over it (but lucky for her she gets to continue to endure it for as long as we're her parents).

Even though I didn't get to say the dinner prayer on my very first day of being 34, it was a pretty great birthday, anyway. And Zoë is excited that I'm finally her age again—in fact, right now she is the exact same age as Andrew and I. 34, 34, and 4. The very same!

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