I’m interrupting the flow of food preservation posts to tell you that my baby girl, Charlotte, turned four on Thursday. This ragamuffin child makes me laugh every single day, and she tells the BEST stories. She’s definitely a head-in-the-clouds kind of kid with almost no interest in learning letters or buckling down to study anything (unlike über-focused Levi), but her imagination runs wild, and she is happy. (Her hair has also grown quite a bit since “The Incident”. I think it’s kinda matted down with bubble-making liquid from her new big bubble wand in these photos, but most of the time, it’s pretty cute.)
A mother hen with a new batch of chicks showed up on the morning of her birthday, and she was so excited to pet and cuddle with a couple of them. At her request, we also got muffins at a coffee shop in Corvallis, thrifted a set of Dora card games, and went to see a movie at the theater for her (and Levi’s) very first time. (Planes was terrible by the way.)
We ended the day with a barbecue-baked, coconut-orange bundt cake. I think it was my best barbecue-baked cake to date even if it wasn’t exactly perfect. Charlotte loves anything with sugar in it, so I knew she wouldn’t complain no matter how it turned out, but the rest of us rather enjoyed it as well.
Levi starts kindergarten tomorrow, and I’m sure I’ll be a heap of tears after he’s out the door. It’s not exactly that I wish my kids wouldn’t grow up because each new phase so far has been fun and interesting (We’ll see if that holds true through puberty.), but these milestones keep taking me by surprise. When exactly did they get so big? How is it possible that I’ve started using such cliché mom statements? Gah!
For now, Charlotte is very very proud of being a whopping four years old, and I am very proud to have such a capable/creative/beautiful little(ish) girl.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Happy Birthday to your sweet girl! Sounds like the loveliest of days.
The time does fly by~ I look at my two and can hardly believe I’ve been a mom for this long a time.
Happy birthday, Charlotte! I hear you on the “mom cliche” statements. They come flying out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying. Oh well, they come with the territory, I guess.
Happy birthday to your little girl! Love her pants!
Me, too! The pants were part of a big bundle of clothes I bought at various thrift stores recently and gave her for her birthday.
Greetings from India! What I loved most about the post is the simplicity of the celebration. I miss those days when birthdays were all about fun, laughter, warmth and small gatherings. Now the barbie-mermaid-train etc etc theme parties make me sick…so much waste is generated and I think it is making children more materialistic and less happy!