Birthday Week

It is September birthday week here, we have celebrated John and Mary’s 7th birthday with pancakes and cupcakes, and today we lit the candles for Peter’s 10th birthday.

Peter is the oldest builder kid, and as you can see in the picture above, 10 is really big!  Peter contributes so much to our home life, and he has had a strong role in forming our other children, he is like a builder on a different level, the one who can see the low details which the adults often miss.  I love how his younger siblings keep him young, he does not just help care for them, he happily plays with them and deeply loves them.  I love that he put his brother’s name on the list of people to invite to his birthday party, showing that he counts John among his friends.  I love his enthusiasm for learning, that he thanks me often for homeschooling him, that he is not afraid to try hard and stretch himself intellectually.  I love that he told his father with great pride about how he looked up and found a Chesterton (Fr. Brown) book in the library all by himself.  I love that he is getting better about handling difficult emotional situations, and I love the safe space and freedom which homeschooling has given him to do so at his own pace.  I love the way that he screams at the TV during baseball games, and I will love watching him celebrate the playoff season with his dad.  I love his pride in his skiing.

I love his height (over 5 feet), but I sort of hate it, too, because it is a reminder to me that he is growing up.  I love that he gets to be the first to do everything, but I hate that he has to suffer because often I haven’t figured out that next stage yet.  I feel sentimental about him, we tell him all the time that he got our family started, that we were so overjoyed with him that we decided to be open to having more children (and more, and more, and more!).