December Birthdays Are Hard

Since we're talking about entitlement with the youngest member of our family, I should probably relay the birthday weekend story to you.

Luke turned 14 on Saturday. It was a low-key event here, like most birthdays are. We don't generally do parties, but just invite grandparents over to help celebrate the day with us. And we don't do cake, either. It's a weird thing our family has that we have just learned to embrace. For whatever odd reason, all 7 of us will eat cake if that's the only choice offered, but much prefer other desserts instead. Since birthdays are all about what the birthday person wants, we never do cake. Sometimes we have a pie, sometimes we make that yummy pudding-y mud dessert, sometimes we try new recipes just for fun. Luke is a donut lover, so we bought a few dozen donuts and ice cream for his celebration day. He was a happy camper indeed.

But I digress.

Micah, The Entitled, thinks all birthdays are all about him. He's having a hard time with the concept that others can have birthdays or blow out candles or open gifts. Generally, if we either let him help blow out candles or  re-light to let him do it all over again, he's good to go. He's has been staying up later than he needs to be a few nights, however, and is a bit tired. Plus, I'm working on that entitlement thing with him and refused to let him blow out candles.

I'm sure you can imagine how that went over.

Luke opened gifts, and Micah grumbled his protest the entire time. And then when Luke was done, Micah got all the gifts out from under the tree and proceeded to unwrap them. (That's the thing about December birthdays. There are gifts under trees.) We let Micah just keep unwrapping, because the only gifts there were the ones that he bought at the school store to give to all of us. Plus, he buys things that he loves for himself, and despite the name on the packaging, they're all for him anyway. We figured if he wanted to open his Christmas gifts for himself on Luke's birthday, that would be fine with us. It made everyone happy. Micah is very good at pretending to be surprised by gifts that he already knows he got. Or he has a really bad memory. Either way, he was happy, and was sure to rub it in to Luke that he got more presents.

December birthdays are hard. All the gifts and all the suspense of Christmas, and then someone has the nerve to be born in the midst of all the build-up just to add to the I Want's. Sheesh. Yet another reason Micah is disgruntled with Luke on a daily basis.