Is It Somebody's Birthday Today?

A typical morning finds me waking up sometime after 6 a.m. and asking myself, "Do I have a kid who has a birthday today?" Actually, now that I think about it, that's usually the second question. The first question is, "Who's upstairs doing all the hollering?" For some reason, Ezra has taken it upon himself to be our alarm clock. The dude can holler, let me tell you. I comfort myself thinking that his set of lungs may someday carry him to Olympic glory. On that all-too-rare occasion he's actually snoozing up until breakfast, sweet Olivia usually takes over to make sure we see the sunrise.
Today, as you can see, we had a birthday at Team Sabo headquarters. Ezra turned 3. At least I'm pretty sure he turned 3. (Editor's note: That's what it says on the cake. See it there? 3. Author's reply: I have glasses. I can see. Quick, what's his middle name. Editor's answer: Thaniel. Author's retort: I knew that. You know I knew that.) Isn't that a cool cake? Claire, or `Kware' as Ezra says, made it for him. Ezra is a very simple little guy. That's one of the things I appreciate about him. I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said he wanted to go to the market and get some potato chips. So we trundled off to Rick's Country Store, a Gloucester institution located in metropolitan Sassafras, which is a community of dozens of rural folks living roughly between Ark, Allmondsville and Pinetta. Gloucester's kind of funny that way. The county doesn't have an incorporated city to speak of, but just a collection of areas like Sassafras, Harcum, Cappahosic, Clay Bank and even Ordinary. At Rick's Country Store, a combination gas station, convenience store and deli where you can buy everything from hardware supplies to hand-dipped ice cream cones and shakes, Ezra picked up his 35-cent bag of Utz potato chips, an Airhead and some gummies to boot. Man, he was living large. The king of Sassafras.