Our little man turns 6!

My youngest baby turned 6 on the 22nd of February. We have decided to have a party in March when the weather is nicer and we can go to a park to play with some of his friends.

As we had scheduled a work weekend at the beach house, we spent Elijah's birthday at the beach. That was just fine with him, because it meant both of  his big brothers would be able to be there.

Having breakfast in bed.

Creatively, Elijah requested Oreo Poptart with whip cream as his birthday breakfast…easy enough!

 For his birthday meal, at first he chose the old standby, "Old MacDonalds". With a bit of coercion from us, and the lure of macaroni and cheese, he chose Chili's.  When we sat down, the table behind us had someone celebrating a birthday. Elijah said, "Someone else has a birthday on February 22?" We spoke to our waitress and they came out singing to Elijah.

At first, he was quite flabbergasted and didn't know how to react.

When he realized it meant a special treat, he was fine and dandy!

Never one to go with the tried and true, for his family birthday cake, he chose brownies. Once we got home we had another round of  "Happy Birthday", followed by presents.

Elijah marches to the tune of his own drummer a lot of the time. He is still a car nut! He loves, loves, loves cars. He has about a zillion to play with, but whenever we are looking for a toy for him, he invariably wants a car. He can point out makes and models of many cars. He will walk by a parked car and many times he will stop, stoop over and look to see if any part of the car's undercarriage touches the curb or parking stop.

He loves his stuffed animals. They all have names and personalities. This is "Oinky"

Elijah is a tried and true baby whisperer. He loves babies and will stop and talk with any he sees. Both of his nieces love him and will flash an ear to ear grin faster for him than just about anyone.

Elijah is slowly coming to terms with his beginnings. He loves to hear the story about when we knew he was our son.  He realizes that he is adopted and from time to time bursts out with questions which give a glimpse to his inner thoughts and processing. Because of his sisters becoming mothers, he phrases birth as, "pushing out".  The other day he asked me, "Do I look like the lady that pushed me out?" To which I replied, "You might, I don't know what she looked like." He then said, "She looked like me, that's what she looked like!"

Elijah is still on the very small size. He just outgrew size 3t and some 4t pants. He eats very slowly and compounds that with talking instead of eating. We have to routinely tell him to eat and take a break from talking.

We didn't start kindergarten this year in order to give him an extra year to develop. He knows all of the letters and can sound out quite a few. He can write his name and do some simple addition. Sometimes he wants to do "school" while Abbey does her work. He picks up a lot just by being in the same room. The other day, after hearing about the continents, he showed he had been passively listening. I was listing the 7 continents. I got 6 and was trying to recall which I had missed. Out of the blue, Elijah says the one I had left out, "Africa".

One of Mr E's favorite things to do is to ride his bike. He asks to ride at least once every day.  It doesn't matter if he is joined by Abbey or not, he just loves to ride!

He enjoys roughhousing with his Daddy.

I'm so thankful that the Lord brought Elijah into our lives. He enriches it daily. We love him more than he will ever know!!

Happy birthday, Elijah, my buddy!