Happy 4th Birthday!

Anders is 4 today.  This reality was starting to settle on me 4 years ago this afternoon. I had been really psyched for Anders to have an October birthday.  The Petersons have at least 4 generations of October birthdays and Anna has a couple in her family too.  It was a small thing that was not to be along with many other bigger things that were not to be.
I finally reached the point in the last 6 months where I wanted time to start slowing down a bit.  Anders is soaring now physically as well as intellectually.  I said when Anders was 0-2 that if you want to slow down time just have a baby, now I'm starting to think that if you want time to go faster have a preschooler.
Anders is just about ready for 3rd grade.  He reads, adds, subtracts, and the other night in the car he was getting a handle on multiplication.  I remember huddling with the smart kids at the end of second grade to learn multiplication before everyone else did in third grade because we were bored in regular math.  I was 8 1/2 at the time, while Anders was just turning 4.
Before you jump to the conclusion that Anders is Rain Man, you need to experience his sense of humor.  He impersonates Anna, me, and his teachers.  He's constantly teasing us.  I know this comes off as bragging, but anyone who spends time with Anders invariably comes at us with the "why didn't you tell us?!" tone.  If anything, I'm still underselling Anders.  I didn't mention the Spanish he's working on, the Dutch alphabet, or the smattering of Swahili words he knows.  If you are still reading, you have probably stopped believing me.  I just hope I'm able to carry on a conversation with him when Anders is 8 1/2!
When we lived in Athens and before friends visited, they'd invariably say that they thought I was drunk on hyperbole when describing how bad it was, but that I'd actually undersold its awfulness.  Now that didn't stop many of them from visiting repeatedly (see: Albers, Brad).  With Anders the inverse is true, I can't adequately communicate how smart he is.  As we've traveled around and visited my family, on a couple of occasions relatives have exclaimed, "He reads!"  Yes, he's been reading since he was 2 and now he reads almost everything.  Again, these are just words on a screen until you spend time with him. 
He saw his first movie in a theatre today, "Despicable Me 2."  He shared his popcorn with me, slipping me pieces (I would not have done that at 24. let alone 4), as he narrated the movie as he would a book he was reading, but needs to find a movie theatre voice because his inside voice is more like this guy: http://www.hulu.com/watch/276438
I was planning on running the Evelopet again for the first time this year, but then I pulled a muscle in my leg, which might be a blessing in disguise as I don't want my participation to trigger the premature birth of any other Nordic Fest Babies.
I looked at the pictures we took on 7-25-09 today and we looked like we had just been told in explicit detail the contents of that hot dog we just ate. 
In some ways it feels like it happened last year, in other ways it feels like 10 years ago.  So much about life changed drastically that year, and then in 2011, that life today might be unrecognizable to 2009 me in some ways, but in other ways it is quite recognizable as we mark time this weekend with another Nordic Fest.
I'm realizing what a big difference it is between one's own birthday and a child's birthday.  When I cared about my birthday, I thought, "Cool, it's my birthday, let's celebrate!"  I imagine my mom had an entirely different set of emotions considering the unique circumstances of my arrival.  Anders gets excited about his birthday 6 months out, and it's just unbridled joy.  I hope he never feels the same sense of fear and exhilaration that I felt on that day. I knew things were going to be okay after I looked into his baby blues, but I also knew that we had thrown the script out the 5th floor window of Fairview Riverside.