Caleb's Birthday

Last week Caleb turned 11!

This boy wanted a Big Foot birthday this year.  He's continually fascinated by imaginary creatures (think Loch Ness, Godzilla, King Kong, and Greek mythological creatures like Cerberus, Minotaur, and Scylla).  So it felt right that Caleb wanted a Big Foot birthday.

We started the celebrations the night before with a pancake supper - Sasquatch pancakes, that is!  Let me tell you, trying to make pancakes in the shape of a Sasquatch is not a natural talent of mine.  There were several iterations, but thankfully our kids had marvelously low expectations and marvelously high enjoyment of whatever I flipped out of the pan.  Caleb was delighted!

We began the morning of his birthday with a present (as all birthdays should begin, in my humble opinion).  His first present was a book.  Caleb is a huge bookworm.  He reads constantly, and when he's not reading he's usually writing or telling his own stories.  So the easiest thing to get him these days is books!

I always have the birthday boy help to make the cake.  My rule is: you help bake the cake and then I'll decorate it for you!  They like helping with the cake anyway.  Who doesn't like seeing their own birthday cake come together and then licking the batter off the spoon when it's done???

While the cake baked, Caleb opened another present: more books!  Our collection of African wildlife books continues to grow.  Caleb is a fount of knowledge when it comes to wildlife in general, and a guru of African wildlife in particular.  He's basically a walking encyclopedia.  And his knowledge keeps growing.  For instance, he started reading the Primates book right away and learned about a colobus monkey in West Africa that differs from the kinds we have here in East Africa.  He's floored to keep learning about wildlife!

We still homeschooled in the morning, but finished earlier than usual because Mama had to focus on decorating the cake.  I was praying I wouldn't completely mess up the Big Foot.  Thankfully Big Foot's shape can be a bit amorphous and still be identified as Big Foot (see pancake pictures above).  By God's grace the cake turned out well!  

I always put the birthday boy's name on the cake somewhere, as well as their age.  This time I hid the "11" a bit because I wasn't sure how else to obviously incorporate it.  The two pine trees represent the number 11.  I totally forgot about needing to put candles on later, and so I didn't have a plan for incorporating candles into the scene, but Caleb didn't care and was happy to put candles on the cake wherever he wanted to when the time came.

He really loved the cake, and I really loved that he loved it.

He chose pizza for his birthday supper, so I got the dough rising as soon as I finished the cake, and we devoured the pizza right before some friends came over to eat the cake with us.

Caleb was adamant that he did not want a birthday party.  He was just as adamant that he didn't want anyone to sing for him (not even us).  But he did want to share his cake, so we invited the expats over with clear instructions that no one could sing Happy Birthday, and it was a lovely low-key evening with some very good cake!

I convinced him to open one present while his friends were over, and he was floored to get this book from us: Mountain Dragons: In Search of Chameleons in the Highlands of Kenya.  I learned about this book from another homeschooling missionary mama who loves chameleons, and I knew we needed it in our library.  Gorgeous photos accompany the text and we've already learned some interesting new facts.  The most fascinating is that apparently there are subspecies of the Jackson's chameleon!  Jackson's are the most common species of chameleon in our area, and the males have horns while the females do not, but apparently the females of another subspecies can sometimes have horns too!  We had no idea.  So now we're wondering if we've ever encountered a female with horns...  Who knows?

Books, books, and more books!  Between us and the grandparents, Caleb was extremely spoiled with the number of new books he received this year.  And I love it!  Of all the things we could be collecting in this house, books are the most important.  I regularly remind the boys that reading is incredibly valuable because reading increases our knowledge and wisdom, and hopefully, more than anything, increased knowledge and wisdom will lead to an increased love for God.

So bring on the books!

A couple days after his birthday we had a Mom/Dad/Caleb movie night.  We set up a movie for the other boys in another room, then the three of us snuggled up in our room to watch Mighty Joe Young.  None of us had seen it before but it looked like the perfect Caleb movie because it's about a giant gorilla and wildlife conservation.  To say that Caleb loved the movie would be an understatement.  He was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement!  It will undoubtedly be in the regular movie lineup from now on.  Eli and I liked it too - plenty of action and an interesting plot overall - but a particular perk is that in the beginning of the movie, which takes place in Africa, a lot of Swahili is spoken!  It was so fun to recognize some of what the characters were saying in Swahili.

Caleb is an incredibly imaginative kid.  He lives in his head much of the time and it can be hard for him to focus on what's right in front of him, but his creativity is inspiring and we love how much reading and creating his own stories informs how he thinks about the world.  Caleb makes connections between stories and real life and he asks good and thought-provoking questions because of it.

His heart is so kind, and his affectionate nature encourages our hearts daily.  Caleb still loves to snuggle with us, and he'll still hold my hand when we're walking somewhere.  We greatly appreciate his gentle side.

And of course he's still insanely passionate about wildlife and all of God's creation.  That is the first thing everyone associates with Caleb: wildlife!  We are so proud of his love and respect for animals and we have learned a lot about how to care for creation because of this precious son of ours.

More important than anything, Caleb loves the Lord.  He listens eagerly when we do Bible lessons at home and he remembers what he learns.  He enjoys listening to worship music, and he likes rereading our devotional books and citing them in random conversations.  We are so proud of this kid and we continually pray that Caleb will follow the Lord wholeheartedly and that he'll have a different spirit about him (as his namesake did) - a spirit of devotion and faithfulness to walk in the ways of the Lord.

Happy Birthday, Caleb!  We love you!