Alexander is 9!

I am woefully underprepared for celebrating birthdays right now, so after the little kids and I went to the library for a crafting activity (on the 13th, the day after Zoë and I got back from Vienna) we just met Andrew, Miriam, and Benjamin at good ol' City Center on our way home from the library to grab some dinner and then let Alexander pick out a toy from the toy store (that he's been thinking about wanting for about a month now). 

He also wanted to pick out some new socks (done!) and chose a Minecraft t-shirt and some new runners as well (his shoes were getting a little raggedy). He had picked out a cake mix with Andrew earlier in the week and really wanted to get home in time to bake it himself (with Zoë's help). 

They mostly did great, but mixed it in the new KitchenAid bowl that hadn't been washed and had only recently been unpacked...so there were bits of, like, styrofoam in the batter. So we put that into a container in the sink to deal with later and set the kids to work making another cake (luckily Andrew got two boxes of cake mix in the flavour Alexander wanted—orange). 

They did a great job, finishing up shortly after 11:00 and determining to wake up early to decorated it (with Phoebe's help) in the morning. 

Phoebe had been terribly upset about being put to bed when we got home, being summarily excluded from the cake-baking process and was quite intent on waking up to help decorate the cake. 

She ended up waking up around midnight and was a complete chaos machine!

She got a drink from the water cooler upstairs, but put too much in her cup...so she walked with it all the way downstairs to put it in the sink, sloshing water the whole way. And then she was curious about what was in the sink—a container of cake batter! (Yes, still—midnight was not so long after we finally got Alexander and Zoë to bed, remember?)

She dipped her hands in and flung them about, more or less, on the dish drying mats.

She wiped quite a lot of batter on the mats, but not enough to have clean hands...we know this because Andrew eventually intercepted her to put her back to bed and somehow didn't notice her hands at all until we went into the kitchen (after she was back in bed) and noticed the cake batter that was everywhere. 

It was then that he looked down and saw that he had little batter handprints on his pant legs where she hand grabbed him in a hug in the hallway. 

It was a fantastic mess.:

But true to their word the kids got up early and were decorating the cake when I got out of bed this morning (looks like broad daylight, but keep in mind the sun rises at, like, 4 am)

We put together the solar powered robot Alexander had picked out and learned that I'd have to go back to the mall before he could wear his shirt (because they didn't take off the little "don't steal me" tag and I hadn't noticed when we were at the mall), which was a little disappointing for him, but he got over it.

Lucky for him, I had to go spend the afternoon at the health center getting my blood work and x-rays done for my residency visa. I stopped at the mall on the way home (with the receipt) and they took the tag off the shirt, so I was able to bring home a now-wearable shirt for Alex, which he was excited about.

Andrew made homemade tortillas and homemade salsa and homemade everything for dinner. We haven't really had a good Mexican dinner since arriving, so this was quite the birthday treat for Alexander:

After his dinner we went for a walk along the corniche. We walked all the way down to the bridge, off Gewan, and onto The Pearl.

Here's a picture of a little crab that was scuttling along beside us in the water for the entire length of the promenade (we also enjoyed watching the fish jump in the water):

And here's Alexander with The Pearl behind him:

I took some pictures of the lovely flowers along the promenade for Susanne—we do have beautiful nature here as well...it's just...been so hot that we haven't been outside much and it's so desert that we have to really look for it sometimes.

Prepare yourselves for too many pictures of the promenade because it's pretty:

Crossing under this bridge allows us to cross over to The Pearl, where we discovered our beach access. We've been trying to figure out where we're allowed to use the beach and, as it turns out, this is one of the "public" Pearl beaches (public is in quotes because it's really closed to the public, but open to Pearl residents and since we are residents it's open to us).

Here are Zoë and Alexander jumping to try to touch the underside of the bridge:

And here we are at the beach wondering whether or not it's a beach we can use (there are some beaches here that are only accessible through a hotel, for example). But it seems that we can use it...and we did use it! We walked the whole length of it!

The kids touched the water, but didn't go in (there is no swimming allowed at the beach between dusk and dawn). We really like following rules here, so we read all the rules on the sign before committing to a stroll on the beach.

I also took a picture of this sign, which I find perplexing:

No dogs, no biking or skateboarding or rollerblading, no littering, and then...what?! 

No...falling? How could that possibly be regulated?

No...jumping? No...moonwalking? No...crazy trust exercises? No...clicking of heels?

Like, what is it that we're not supposed to do?! Ideas are welcome because clearly I do not understand this sign. Fortunately the list of rules for the beach were written in plain English (and Arabic).

Here's a view of our apartment complex area from across the water (I loved those little bird footprints—we found some big bird footprints farther down the beach):

Benjamin found a (dead) crab:

And when we walked to the end of the beach area, we realized that there's definitely an access point right off the other bridge that's quite close to our house—probably about a five minute walk from our door! 

We went home, put candles on Alexander's cake, and sang to him (Andrew chose the starting note).

When asked what his favourite part of being 8 was he said, "Mom!" (as is tradition) and then tacked on, "And learning how to code!"

"Not moving to another country?!" Andrew asked. 

And then people started offering other ideas—not getting baptized? Not flying on a plane? Not swimming in county? Not...whatever...

"Those are all good things!" Alexander said. "I like them all! I just really like coding!"

And his mother, of course!

It was fitting that on his last day of being 8 (yesterday), Phoebe picked out Robert Munsch's I Love You Forever (which I know people have all sorts of feelings about...I happen to like it). It was fun to read because on one of the pages of the book the mother is talking about her son who "grew and grew and grew" until he was nine years old. I nudged Alexander with my elbow and he snuggled sweetly into my shoulder and remarked that he didn't do any of the naughty things that that nine-year-old boy did (which is largely true). Alexander is a sweetheart.

I said (faux-pouting) that I couldn't believe it was his last day of being 8.

"And in a month it will be Phoebe's last day of being 4!" Zoë pointed out (unhelpfully). 

I faux-pouted more. "I can't believe my babies are all getting so old!" I whimpered. 

"Don't worry, Mommy," Phoebe said. "You’re already very old! And you’re getting older, too! Older and older, every day…older and older and older and..."

"Ahem. Thank you, Phoebe, for pointing that out," I said, cutting off her string of oldifications. "We are all getting older, it's true. And it's not sad at all. It's something to celebrate!"

So here we are having cake!

It took Alexander several times to blow out all the candles.

And here he is taking a bite of his cake-slice popsicle (forksicle?):

It was a pretty good birthday for this boy, even it it was a bit slapdash. We're excited to try out the beach this weekend (after we get the kids off to Abu Dhabi for youth conference tomorrow...and after I get my fingerprints taken at the police station for my visa and after...anyway...we hope to treat him to our first Doha beach day this weekend).