Birthday celebration, Legoland and blood test

Saturday the 4th was Jinbao's birthday. He turned 12 although he still thinks he is 13. He does not understand that when you are born in China they start with 1, but here you start with 0 and are 1 when you have lived a whole year. I am going to wait to explain that one because he is very proud of being older. I imagine it will feel like being left back. I was glad it was his birthday since Friday was a rough day when we went to visit the doctor. We had a chance to score points with him. We started out by giving him a Lego set. 1 point. He covered his face for the picture because sometimes he gets tired of us taking so many pictures of him:).




Building Legos with Matthew.




After lunch we had an ice cream cake. Point 2. He sings happy birthday in English.




Dig in!




Then we went for a ride to Ft. Lauderdale to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law at the hospital to see their new baby who was born 9 weeks early. I was concerned he would be afraid of all the machines hooked up to his new cousin in the NICU but he handled it well. We decided to take him out to eat crabs at Rustic Inn for his birthday. He was in heaven with goo running down to his elbows. Point 3.





Later that week we took the kids to Legoland and told him it was for his birthday. Point 4. He said he loved roller coasters, made a terrified look while on them then begged to go again. Here of some pictures of the pictures they took. Sorry for the quality but check out his face!









Some other shots from the day....





















So he had a pretty good week. He had one incident when he tried to take Makenna's computer from her when she was on it. When I told him no he went it his room and locked the door. I could hear him punching his welcome home balloon so hard I'm surprised it didn't pop. I tried to talk to him with the translator and even with Andrew translating some of it but he was so stubborn and kept saying he didn't understand. So I let him know I think he did understand and left him alone. He kept punching the balloon, jogging around his room and sat sulking for a while, then came out a new man. I decided not to worry too much if he gets upset because he seems to work it out himself and finally gets over it.
It was a similar situation with his blood work today. He was nervous but cooperative....at first.....until the needle was in and filling up the tubes. The nurse was great and patient. He got really angry and would not say goodbye to the nurse or let me touch him. Ten minutes later I was trying to explain to him on the translator why he needed to have it done and he kept making jokes about farts on the translator. Typical boy. So my new motto is let him get mad, he'll get over it!
Thanks for following! Donna