A Great Big 4 Year Birthday!

Yesterday was the big #4 for Nathan! He woke up excited and went to bed excited and we all had lots of fun in between.  Here are some Nathan-isms from the day:

• "Beautiful decorations Mommy" first thing when he walked out of his room in the morning, about the balloons and crepe paper decorating his door.
• "Daddy! Balloons!" when Daddy came home post-call with helium balloons for the kids.
• "Some cash! Some cash for me!  Now I have more cash!  Some one dollars!" when he opened a card from my friend Jennie with four dollar bills in it.  Then he quickly ran to his room to get his wallet and add it to the single dollar bill Nana gave him a few weeks ago.  And my mommy heart almost burst with happiness when he told me later, "Mommy, at church, you don't need to give me any coins or a folded paper (our contribution check), I'm going to give my own money back to God.  Tell Daddy too so he doesn't give me any coins."
• In the afternoon we told him that he could pick to go anywhere to any restaurant to eat for his birthday dinner.  He spent quite a while contemplating (out loud) the various T lines he might want to go on (I had to veto his first request of the purple line/commuter rail).  But then he realized that he would have to change out of his shorts and short sleeve shirt into long pants and a long sleeve shirt to do our outing, and he decided he would rather stay home.  Seriously!  He didn't even want one of us to go pick up pizza or anything else for dinner.  So I offered to make him pancakes or waffles and he enthusiastically picked waffles for his birthday dinner!
• Since he had eight presents and two cards to open, I let him open one or two at a time spaced throughout the day.  The first present he picked was from Nana and Grand Dad, which he had spied out at Nana's house while we were in Knoxville.  He had been carrying it around for the better part of a week and was so excited to find out what was inside, which was a new Pete the Cat book (which thrilled Sarah as well)!
• I feel like I have a history of picking "meh" presents for him for his birthday, but this year at the last minute I remembered a gift idea I had thought of months ago that I KNEW he would love - a watch.  So I picked one out on Amazon and we had it overnighted to our apartment. When our door buzzer rang during dinner, both kids exclaimed "Package!" and the whole family hopped up from the table to collect our spoils.  Nathan started grinning ear to ear when I told him that one of the packages was a special present just for him (lots of the presents he got were share-able with Sarah, some because of the nature of the present, and some intentionally so Sarah wouldn't be too sad that she wasn't getting presents).  And when he opened it, he was super excited that he had a watch of his own.
• "What time is my happy birthday Mommy?" I finally figured out that Nathan seemed to think he didn't officially turn four until we sang to him and he blew out his candles.  

And now for a few pictures and videos from yesterday.

 Playing with glowstick wands in their dark bedroom.  Wouldn't you know that it took Nathan all of 3 minutes to find out that the glow stick could be pulled out of the outer foam layer!  So, of course, Sarah had to have me help get hers out too!

He was so excited about his #4 cake, but unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of it.  His cake of choice was chocolate cake with chocolate icing, which I then topped with some sprinkles to his delight.

I read about a tradition to take pictures of mom and dad with the birthday kid every year on their birthdays, so I'm starting that this year.

And, of course, Sarah wanted a picture as well.  This is the third time in a week that we've inadvertently coordinated our outfits.  Twice on vacation I put her in a black and white zebra stripe shirt on the same day that I wore my navy & white stripe shirt, then yesterday was the day of the plaids!  The crazy thing is, I didn't even realize it until I was reviewing this picture on the camera after I took it!

And now for the videos.  At lunch we decided to practice "Happy Birthday" by putting candles in the kids' cookies.  After singing four rounds of "Happy Birthday" (once for Nathan, then Sarah, then Nathan again, then Sarah again), I decided to capture it on video tape.  This time Nathan decided we would do a joint "Happy Birthday" song so they could go ahead and eat their cookies.



Then here is the real "Happy Birthday" from that evening. Brian mentioned afterward that my flash photography may have ruined the video, but I figure we were just capturing real life at our house! Also I'm not sure where Nathan got the idea to blow out his candle through his fork and I'm actually pretty surprised that it worked!