Today officially concludes the month of birthday madness in our home (though unofficially, Trevor has really had the short end of the stick so far, since he had to work tonight).  Four birthdays in 3 weeks is more than plenty for me, though I’ll admit I did think it would be fun if little one had made his or her appearance today on Daddy and big brother’s birthday, especially if he is a he!

On Sunday we celebrated the three kids’ birthdays with a party at grandmom’s house.

The kids all (even the non-birthday ones) received a joint gift of two new pet mice (the last of our three sadly passed in January after weeks of faithful nursing from Beatrix).  They were promptly christened Kit and Kaya and welcomed into the family by all.   If you’re ever strapped for cash but want to deliver a crowd-pleasing joint birthday gift to small children, you could do a lot worse than a pair of mice!

Juniper’s birthday proper was a busy day full of appointments, but we squeezed in a few presents and a trip to the Lego store, and she was happy as a clam.  Can’t believe this little one is 5 already!  She was just the baby a little while ago, it seems.

We have had an annual tradition since Niko joined us of lining up our five consecutive ages during the 4 days between June’s birthday and Niko’s, but now that we have Delia, we have an even greater degree of age clumping.  We can now take our time about doing this photo, since we have such an abundance of 2006 babies to fill the middle slot, but for tradition’s sake, we took it before Niko’s birthday.

Today we focused mainly on Niko’s half of the boys’ birthdays, since Daddy was sleeping for a night shift tonight.  Niko had presents in the morning, a free cookie at Barnes & Noble in the afternoon and a family movie night after dinner in honor of his special day.

This boy (whose photo I cannot for the life of me figure out how to rotate) will be celebrated sometime over the next couple of days with a simple Chinese take-out or similar.  When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, as usual, his response was “For you to not spend any money on it.”  Chinese sounds good to me!

Happy birthday to all these dear ones the Lord has blessed me with!

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PS If I could ask you to pray again, since the Lord has answered so many prayers so directly over the last few weeks, I have another little pregnancy request.  I am just ever so slightly anemic, but despite taking the same liquid iron supplement that did the trick in my last pregnancy, my blood levels have stayed stubbornly below the cut-off for a non-hospital birth this time.  My midwife sent me to Whole Foods (that could be a whole blog post in itself!) with a whole shopping list of bizarre supplements and iron-rich foods.  I think I am getting enough iron for a small elephant now, and I’m trusting that if it doesn’t work by this week’s appointment, then God has a reason for wanting this baby born in a hospital.  Nevertheless, prayers are appreciated!