A Birthday Breakfast

There was a birthday breakfast for a newly-minted teenager. In the family's tradition, they do the wishes/presents/photos early in the morning before the boys go to school.

The friends made little molten chocolate lava cakes. I was a tad horrified. SUGAR AT 7.30AM???! The stomach lurched. It was a birthday, so I happily ate the not-that-sweet cake. There were even two flavors of ice-cream to go along with it. I skipped that. Certainly didn't mind cold water, juices, berries or yoghurt. But not ice-cream this early, not even if it's a really nice real vanilla bean flavor.

Couldn't come empty-handed to Norway. Even if I ignore the adults, presents must be bought for the boys. The girlfriend was most disapproving. She was like, "You'll spoil them! They don't need presents!" Hmmmph. Anyway, a gift was bought for the birthday boy, and also for his brothers. Fair is fair, yea? 

Told the friends that I would get each of their boys a fancy 32-GB iPod Touch. That four-inch retina display, WiFi, camera, messaging, Safari, dual-core A5 chip fantastic for gaming, everything. Growing boys always need new gadgets. They're fans of Apple anyway. The friends acquiesced, but not without some nagging at me. Pooh-ey. Bought the gadgets in Singapore and packed them into the cabin luggage. Got giant bone-crushing bear hugs from the boys by way of thanks. The older ones are taller than me! Then the girlfriend groaned. She's the 'one-woman Apple Tech Support' in the house. It means that each time a new gadget comes in, she has to go through every piece to set parental restrictions. What a pain. HAHAHAHA. I was not sympathetic. Sat beside her to watch her zoom through the set-up and settings to disable certain functions, and sipped my beer, lending no help whatsoever.