Skip to main content

Soren's Seventh Birthday

Soren is seven!  Whoa!

Because his birthday was the day before we left for our long car trip to Illinois, I thought that it was pretty stressful and probably not much fun for him.  But he seemed very pleased to have reached the austere age of seven.  Here is what we did to celebrate:

1.  I offered to take him out for donuts for breakfast but he informed me that he didn't want any sugar, that a normal breakfast would be just fine.  This has been a thing on and off with him for the past couple of months: he refuses the idea of sweets but is usually perfectly happy to eat them when they are actually there.  I took him at his word; we didn't go out for donuts but had leftover cake from Scott's birthday.

2.  Scott stayed back from work for about 1/2 an hour in the morning while we ate, which was more special than donuts anyways.  He gave Soren his birthday present: measuring tools!  There was a balance, a set of beakers, and a tape measure.  Soren was so delighted; he spent the morning measuring things.

3.  I asked Soren a few days before his birthday if he would like to have homeschool or not.  He opted not.  But when he woke up on the appointed day, he changed his mind.  "We should have school today," he told me, "because I felt my brain growing in the night."  I didn't have any big plans but we did do a read-aloud.  He was very proud of his narration.  He told me that he could remember more details because he was seven.  Apparently, seven is a big deal.

4.  With so little schoolwork to do, Soren spent most of the morning playing with legos.  He made a lego replica of his balance and asked me to take this picture of it:


5.  For my gift, I gave Soren a joke book after lunch.  He read it while I taught Kindergarten and then regaled us all with actually amusing jokes during our walk around the block.  For our Kindergarten art project, we made Christmas cookies (full of sugar but also happily devoured).

6.  Dinner was one of the best parts of the day.  When Scott got home, Soren opened a present from his grandparents (a build your own remote-powered car).  The package also included a bunch of birthday decorations, which I was soooooo grateful for.  I had been too stressed about packing, daycare, and homeschool co-op to put up our traditional birthday banner. But with my mom's foresight, we were able to celebrate in style!  The boys played with balloons and a variety of little doo-dahs while I put up the decorations and finished dinner.  Then, there was chicken pot pie!  And, since Soren asked me not to make a cake (that has sugar in it, you know), we put a candle in a bowl of mixed nuts and sang "Happy Birthday".

7.  After dinner, we went to the ward Christmas sing-along.  It was dark as we were walking but Soren told me that his eyesight had improved now that he was seven and so he wasn't scared of the dark.  At the sing-along, everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to Soren and the Fetzers made him a cake.  And in the last five minutes of the evening, he caved and ate some.  Everyone in our ward loves Soren so it was fun for him to talk with all his adult friends on his birthday.

8. When we got home, it was off to bed, with the promise of a long car trip in the morning.  And a couple of days later, at the end of our long car trip, Soren got his birthday present from Nan: a digital microscope.  He enjoyed using it to take close up pictures of his nostrils and fingerprints.


Happy Birthday, Soren!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...
2 comments
Read more

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...
1 comment
Read more

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp...
3 comments
Read more