Someone is 7

Maya turned seven yesterday. She is just such a big girl. Funny, I thought she was going to be sad on her birthday--I thought she would miss her friends and wish she was in Oregon. But, as it turned out, she has had a great week. Birthday presents from friends and relatives started arriving on Monday, and since then, every day this week she gets a call from the front desk that a new package is here. Jonah bought her the movie Cinderella III (because he loves Cinderella and wanted it for himself), and she was surprised and delighted. We sent her out into the hall to read while we got the room ready: we blew up a whole bag of balloons, wore party hats and Mardi Gras necklaces, stuck some candles in a piece of soft french bread for the birthday song and had cookies and Italian sodas, then watched Cinderella together. Of course her real celebration will be in NY--our gift to her is a new bike which is too big to purchase here, and she is very excited to spend time with her friend Abbie who is coming to visit in April.
Seven feels like such a rite of passage. I have come across many references to this age being the beginning of thinking like an adult (Piaget, Chilton Pierce, even in Waldorf education this is recognized as a milestone of mental development), and it is true--I notice Maya thinking more logically, tying things together from different sources unexpectedly and being able to take more in.
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent something or left a phone message to make Maya's week special. She loves every minute of her birthday celebration.
Our time in Florida is on a countdown--we bought return tickets to New York yesterday. We leave on March 29th. Our relocation specialist is looking for a furnished apartment for us for the month of April and we will begin the hunt for our own apartment once again when we return to the city.
Brett's co-workers bought another boat and worked this week to get it ready for diving. He has spent a couple full days here working in the office writing reports, but will spend most of the rest of his time in Jacksonville diving to complete the field work, then continue on the reports back in NYC.