Her first homeschool birthday was turning NINE.

Béla, of course, made her cake. It is the recipe used to make painter Claude Monet’s favorite birthday cake. (Really.) And that bright green — is not food coloring. It’s spinach.

She has now earned the discretion to only have media approved by her put online. Here she is playing with a pocket vocal-effects/beat-machine with ‘80’s-style production values. Just a cool little thing.

She also got a wood-burning art set, an ancient Greek-style lyre (yes, a lyre), two cool t-shirts:

(Achilles and Ajax playing dice.)

AND, the gift that I was most excited about — this trio of inscribed books from Emily Wilson, the first woman to ever translate Homer’s Odyssey.

Claudia had asked to make “a large sacrifice” to the Gods of Olympus for her birthday. Here you see actual meat, fat and bone flying from her hand into the pyre.

She has gone up to the “Teen Cave” with cats while the rest of us watch Lawrence of Arabia.