Happy Half Birthday, Alexander!

This morning we celebrated Alexander's half-year birthday at his school. The school observes all of its students' birthdays, and those with summer birthdays get to celebrate mid year.

The child holds a globe of the planet Earth and walks around a picture of the sun once for each year of his or her life. During each circle around, the mom and dad tell a couple of milestones he hit during that year. Then after his friends and teachers sing the birthday song he sits on our laps and the parents read some of his favorite things. They'd sent home a "birthday sheet" for us to fill in and to which we also affixed Alexander's baby photo, a family photo and one of our favorite photos of him.

Alexander said his fav foods are spaghetti and meatballs and oranges; his fav colors are blue, purple and black; his favorite things to do are ride his bicycle and play basketball and to play with his cars; and he wants to be a baseball player and Batman when he grows up. I'm not at all sure where he got Batman from since he's never seen Batman or received any Batman paraphernalia. Spiderman he knows. Must've learned about Batman at school, I suppose.

Then I read to the class one of Alexander's favorite books. As you might imagine why, I gave him shorter books from which to choose. He settled on one of those easy-reader Scholastic Books about Hot Wheels called "Racing U.S.A." It was in his stocking/pillowcase for Christmas, so it's kind of a new favorite anyway.

We left little prepackaged Nemo fruit-flavored gummy treats which were given to all his classmates to take home in their backpacks, and we also gave a little donation in Alexander's name. The school really discourages cupcakes, cake and fruit roll-ups since they're such a mess. And they don't carve out time enough for real cake-cutting and such anyway. These kids have to get to work learning!

He's 3.5 years old, by the way. Here are a few pics and a video clip.