Grandpa's birthday visit

With it being Christina's 16th birthday this year Ernie's dad decided to come for a brief visit from Texas. Before he came he bought some presents online for the boys and had them shipped to our home. When their Grandpa opened up the big boxes full of wrapped presents the boys got so excited! They started ripping into the presents. None of them had name tags since they had been wrapped as part of the purchase, but thankfully the boys didn't care or fight over anything. They were just elated at all the new toys, and even exclaimed repeatedly, "We're sharing! We can share!" Even though they are only one year apart, I have never been the sort to make sure they get the same toys. I know many parents do this to prevent fighting, but instead I usually get two different things to encourage them to share. Yes, they fight over the toys sometimes, but in the end they still learn how to share. Plus, instead of having two of everything, they have twice as many different toys to choose from. It was wonderful to see them opening up everything without regard to who each toy belonged too.

Caleb's 5th birthday was just one week before Ernie's dad came to town for Christina's 16th birthday, and ever since Caleb's birthday Malachi had whined about it not being his birthday. We didn't have a party or even a cake for Caleb, and everything he did on his birthday Malachi got to do also. Nonetheless he felt pretty left out when Caleb had a birthday and then just a week later Christina had one also. During all the excitement of opening presents, Malachi excitedly asked, "Is it my birthday?!!!!" Since he had whined so much about it not being his birthday we figured it couldn't hurt to just say yes and let him think it really was his birthday. What we didn't expect was for him to scream in response (at the top of his lungs!), "Yay!!!!! It's my birthday!!! I'm 4 now! I get to play baseball now!!!" (When Caleb started playing baseball this year, before he turned 5, Malachi wondered why he couldn't play too. We told him he had to wait until he was 4 like Caleb.) Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that when we decided to let Malachi think it was his birthday did we think he would put all the details together so quickly to think he was turning 4 and would therefore get to play baseball. Needless to say, next baseball practice took a bit of explaining to him. I ended up just telling him he had only turned 3 1/2 at that birthday, and that soon he would have another birthday and turn 4.