Steven's 5th birthday

Last Monday we celebrated Steven's 5th birthday.

One of his first memories of coming to live with us last year was celebrating his birthday. Five days after coming home, on Easter Sunday, he turned 4 years old, and we had a small party for him following our potluck. Ever since then, as he has been gaining the ability to communicate, he has been asking if it is his birthday again. As everyone else in the family celebrated their birthdays this year, he has been waiting and waiting for his turn again to have everyone sing to him,

"appy berday to Tepen." 

At long last it was his special day. And we had another small party for him in his honor with his four favorite friends, Moise, Jake, Jonah, and Mireya. It was so great to have Mike and Amy come down from Yako again to spend the day with us before we leave and to celebrate Steven, who is very dear to their hearts. 

It was a great day. Very busy and hectic (a tad stressful) with trying to get the house ready for the packers to come, and getting ready for his birthday and for company, but everyone who came is like family to us and once we got started it was nice just to stop for a while and not think about anything else besides Steven and his day and having fun with friends. 

Everyone went swimming....

...an airplane piñata that the kids had a blast beating up. Sadly none of the kids could break it so Isaak had to demolish it and sent half the candy into the pool!

he had an "ertane" birthday cake... 

And beamed from ear to ear when we sang him his birthday song. 

It was a great party celebrating our son. Thankful to everyone who came out!

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Steven at 5.....
-weighs 13kilos (~28lbs)
-wears a 3T shirt and 24month pants
-his understanding of English is greatly improved! He can also communicate in return much better. He will need speech therapy to help with his pronuncitation due to his cleft palette, but despite his trouble with pronunciation, we are confident that over time his speech will become clearer.
-can count to 10 by himself
-has not mastered his ABC song yet, but is getting closer
-can identify a circle, and the letter A and B
-he can role play now and make up pretend conversations in his head involving other people
-he's learning to color inside the lines
-can identify the color blue
-very strong willed
-affectionate
-favorite friends are Jonah and Jake
-loves to play swords with Isaak
-loves to swim
-loves to play with his cars and line them up in rows
-loves to dance
-strongly dislikes cream of wheat