‘Dancing With The Stars’ Pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy Celebrates Joys Of Fatherhood On His Birthday

“Dancing With the Stars” pro Maksmi Chmerkovskiy celebrated his 37th birthday on Tuesday, Jan. 17. But instead of focusing on himself on his special day, he decided to pay tribute to his newborn son, Shai.

On his Instagram account, Chmerkovskiy posted a lengthy story about how his partner, Peta Murgatroyd, gave him the biggest present on Jan. 4. The professional dancer went on to say that he now has a different purpose in his life, and he feels limitless now that he’s become a father. He also revealed that something bad happened on his birthday, but he decided to focus on what truly matters which is his son, wife, family and closest friends.

Chmerkovskiy’s younger brother, Val, who is a fellow pro on “Dancing With the Stars,” posted 12 different photos of himself with Chmerkovskiy to commemorate the latter’s birthday. One of the photos was of the two of them at Disneyland. Other photos were taken from when they were still kids.

Meanwhile, Murgatroyd took to Instagram to praise Chmerkovskiy for being a wonderful partner and best friend. In a follow-up post, Murgatroyd shared a snap of her husband holding Shai in his arms. The dancer called Chmerkovskiy the best father in the world. The couple announced their engagement in December 2015, according to People.

While speaking with E! News Murgatroyd revealed that they plan to tie the knot in July 2017. “It’s a while away, so we’ve got our location, we’ve got our date set, and we haven’t started doing the guest list yet, but that can wait a little bit. We deliberately have it in July so it doesn’t conflict with any of the seasons, so we can bring our past partners and our troupe of dancers and stuff like that,” she said back in June 2016.