Jay's 13th birthday fell on a Saturday this year. He was a good sport about dealing with all of the non-birthday things on his day. Jeff had a track meet (day two of the district meet), and had to leave the house by 8am. I figured 7:30am present opening would suffice, but all three kids were up and raring to go an hour before that. I told Jay that I wasn't sure if he was really a teenager if he was getting up before 7am on a Saturday, to which Jay responded that he had been up since 4:30am unable to fall back asleep. He said he decided to read his scriptures "to start off my new age the best way."
We embraced Jay's true teenage-hood and gave him a new cell phone, to replace the 5+ year old castoff hand-me-down phone that he has been using in 7th grade. Jay was so surprised! His jaw dropped when he took the phone box out of the gift bag, and he just stared at it, then at us, then at the phone again. Jay prefers to live a stable, planned, methodical life, so it is rare to see him so completely flabbergasted. It was fun surprising him so thoroughly. To fill in the tabletop birthday gift bag display, we also gave Jay a case for his phone, a case for his headphones, and 13 packs of gum. Both sets of grandparents gave Jay money for books, which he used to purchase the newest Dungeons and Dragons monsters manual and two books in the Dune series.
While Jay worked on setting up his new phone, Jeff went to get ready to leave for the track meet. Jeff soon discovered that the toilet was majorly clogged and spent the next half hour plunging and bailing out buckets until the toilet was finally back in business. Then Jeff had to dash off to the track meet. Since it was Jay's birthday, he was exempt from Saturday morning chores. Since most of the bathroom floor had recently been covered in toilet water, it was time for a deep clean.
I sighed deeply and began the arduous re-education of my daughters in how to clean a bathroom well. The kids usually do the bare minimum (wipe down) cleaning of the bathroom most weekends, and the bathroom has been needing a deeper level clean for a while. I had been putting it off because I know how much harder it is to teach kids to clean well than it is for me to just do it myself. It was hilarious watching Rose get totally grossed out when I told her to clean behind the toilet. Amber loved spraying the cleaner in the bathtub a little too much. I even taught Rose how to mop for the first time. Rose, Amber, and I spent nearly an hour in our tiny bathroom until it was sparkly clean, freshly mopped, and bleached-lemon-fresh.
I went on a glorious 9 mile run. After lunch, I took all three kids to the library. Jay and Rose each found one book that they wanted to check out--for avid readers, they are surprisingly against checking out more than one physical book at a time. Amber, on the other hand, amassed a stack of over 20 books, which we lugged to the checkout and then lugged to the car. When we got home, everyone sat quietly in the family room reading their new books. MAGIC. I don't know how much of my kids' book-love is nature, and how much of it is nurture, but I LOVE how much they LOVE books. I'll take at least some of the credit for it. My kids' love of books is easily one of my top three most proud accomplishments as a mother.
At 3:30, the girls got ready for their piano recital. It felt like we had just done the piano recital thing, because we had the ensemble recital a few weeks ago, but this one was the studio recital. It was at the church, and I made Jay come even on his birthday, because the girls always go/get dragged to his band and orchestra concerts, and we support each other in our family! When we arrived, Jay took one look at the well-laid spread of cookies and treats on the refreshments table in the back and declared that "it was worth it to come to this recital."
Amber knew the first three measures of her four-line recital song very well, and then she kind of hit a wall in the middle before rallying to finish with a speedy flare at the end. Rose was smooth and confident, playing The Happy Farmer perfectly, tricky fingerings and all. Then came the screechy violin students which actually inspired me to get out my long-neglected violin when we got home, so I could play those familiar Suzuki Lesson Book 1 songs with actual perpendicular bowing and intonation. It was a good recital, and we were in and out of the church gym in just under an hour, including time at the end for awards and refreshments. Our piano teacher, Sarah Wise, divided her studio into two groups to keep recital times shorter. THANK YOU.
When we got home from the recital, the kids ate a quick dinner--Jay's official birthday dinner with both parents present was scheduled for Sunday night. After dinner, we got out Jay's birthday cake: a white Costco cheesecake. The words "happy birthday" have 13 letters, so I got candles that spelled it out. The letter-shaped candles were kind of wimpy, and I burned my thumb while lighting them, but eventually we got most of them to stay lit long enough for us to sing so Jay could blow them out. We are all about enjoying birthday cake and blowing out candles multiple times, and the cheesecake was huge, so we did not worry about running out.
On Sunday afternoon, Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie came over for our weekly classic movie time and stayed for Jay's birthday dinner. We had popcorn and finished watching the 1956 Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and all of his fluffy wig glory. We watched it in three parts over three Sundays because it's almost 4 hours long. It had been over 20 years since I saw that movie, and the memories!
Jay's official birthday dinner was a vat of homemade mac and cheese with roasted kielbasa sausage and cauliflower on the side, and cheesecake for dessert. We had chocolate, caramel, whipped cream, and raspberries to put on top of the cheesecake. Jay had two pieces and felt adequately celebrated.
My firstborn is a teenager! Thirteen years of testing parenting techniques on him, and in spite of it all, Jay is growing more and more into the kind, faithful, clever, thoughtful person he's been from day one. We love our Jay!
1 comment:
You are doing ALLLLLL the best things! What a wonderful mother you are!
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