Birthday in Albania
Durres, Albania
It’s Leo’s 12th birthday today. We’ve been “celebrating” all week with the Play Station 4, but today is his actual birthday. Last night, Josh and I blew up the shiny, mylar balloons spelling out, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” that Ari and I bought at Jumbo in Brasov, Romania. Ari told me that when they woke up, the first half of “BIRTHDAY” had fallen down, so it wasn’t so impressive. Leo didn’t think much of it. Oh well.
Josh and I got up and went to the nearby bakery to get Leo’s birthday cheesecake and I’m so mad at myself for not asking them to write “Happy Birthday” in Albanian!! Aarrgh! Josh said he even thought of it, but didn’t say anything. Ari’s birthday cake was written in Thai, and it would have been fun to have Leo’s in Albanian, but okay.
I made pancakes for breakfast, which turned out absolutely divine. Not all the pancakes I make are good, but these were delicious. Let’s see if I can remember what I put in there. It was a 500g package of vanilla, self-rising flour, 3/4 C or so of whole wheat flour, 2 bananas, 4 TB of chia seeds, 2 eggs, 2 TB cinnamon, 4 big spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, 2 big spoonfuls of turbinado sugar, a bunch of soy milk (2 cups, maybe?) and some cow milk. SO, so good.
At around 4ish we started making family phone calls - grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles - for some birthday love. We also showed Leo the video from friends back home, Seng and Oscar. Leo was surprised and thought it was really cool. Oscar said in the video, “It’s gonna be lit when you get back!” Leo confirmed, “Oscar uses a lot of slang.”
For lunch I made Leo tuna melts, which he loves. Ari had three pieces of his margherita pizza leftover from yesterday, so he ate that. Then, cheesecake! It was fun to sing to him. He’s looking and sounding so much older than when we left. Mom asked on our video call if Leo felt 12 and he said he feels 14.
Photo compilations set to music are perfect annual reflections and I had an urge to make one for Leo. It’s been a BIG year. I selected 140 stills and videos and popped them into iMovie which churned out a 3-minute video, much too long to post on Instagram. I then painfully cut out a ton of photos and lots of seconds of precious Leo video, distilling it down to a minute, or .01% of our trip so far. One of his favorite bands right now is AJR, so I added their song “Birthday Party” and posted the video online. I love watching this 60 seconds of Leo over and over again.
