Successful Birthday... Mostly

Today was the children's Birthday. Lee left without saying "Goodbye" to them this morning, since he left earlier this a.m. to be able to get home earlier. I expected repercussions from that, but it was surprisingly light. Yordi came down 1st - NEVER happens. She said "Habtamu sleep no finish." After a bit, Habti calls down "Daddy" quite pitifully. I don't answer. Then "Mommy" pitifully. I don't answer. Yordi goes up and comes back to report "Habtamu no stand up." Ok, and? After a little more time, H starts crying, so I roll my eyes and go up there. He was not in his bed. He was curled in a ball next to his dresser. I'm thinking "Oh great! Of course, we'll start today badly." He's just kind of laying there whimpering and I can't see anything wrong. Yordi points to her little finger and makes a pinching motion to it. I look closer at Habti, and his pinkie finger was "stuck" under the dresser. Now, I was not born yesterday. This had the total look of a play for sympathy, for attention, for something. I lifted the dresser a little and he pulled his finger out. I hugged him and he cried for 2.2 seconds, then was fine. OooooooKkkkkkkk.

They were quite excited about setting up for the party... we moved chairs and tables out to the deck. They found my wrapping paper and asked what it was. I showed them by giving them an early present... water bottles. Habtamu loved his right away, Yordi was disappointed by the color.

(Let me 'splain about colors... Early on in America, the children established whose car belonged to whom, based on color. Habti gets all the red, blue and yellow cars. Yordi gets all the white and green cars. Daddy gets silver, and Mommy gets black. Well, Mommy got black cars until yesterday when they realized that my Saturn is actually dark green. Now Mommy gets green cars. )

SO, Yordi's water bottle was green, and she was not happy. Green would have been fine yesterday. Habti kept kissing his bottle, so I guess he liked it ok.

After putting water in their bottles, Habti discovered that his leaked, and he walked off in a huff. Stomping included! I looked at his bottle and saw that Yes, it would leak if it weren't closed entirely, which it wasn't.

I put both water bottles aside in the kitchen, waiting for the tide to turn, which it finally did, and now they both like the bottles, thank you very much.

I knew it was just a matter of time before someone broke down. We made it through pizza, and sitting on the deck for while. We flipped a coin to see which child would blow candles out first. Yordi won. We lit the candles and we sang and she blew them out. We lit Habti's candles immediately... before her candles had stopped smoking. He took off in a huff. Who knows why... he understands the coin toss to choose.

He went down stomping and yelling (but not screaming). Everyone except Grandma and Grandpa left. Thanks, you guys, for understanding! We tried our decided on strategy... that Lee would excuse himself, and I'd see the time-out through. When the buzzer went off I asked him if he was finished. He gave me an unconvincing Yes. Finished. I told him how it should sound and he did that and apologized and hugged me. The Lee came back and H cried on his shoulder for a few minutes. Good crying, not bad crying.

THEN they noticed the huge mound of gifts for them. They had not had the bandwidth to see them while everyone was here. We decided to risk the gift opening, which went very well. There was no "She has, He has..." They then played with their new gifts for an hour or so. Awesome!