Birthday Babe

Well it's been several days since my last post, because as you might recall, I was away on *holiday*! Woo woo! (In my head, that sounds like a train's woo woo.) I have much to talk about regarding Seattle, but I also have much to write about before I get to that. Like how our little elf, also on holiday, continued being on his cheekiest behaviour while we were away. And more importantly, how my little middle just turned five today.

(This is a post that my friend Liz will not want to read. You know what I'm talking about, Liz, if you do read this. Elves and babies. *Wink*)

(Apologies for that sidebar.)

So first things first, I'll just quickly catch you up on Banoffee's shenanigans since I know you've been waiting with baited breath over this.

My mom had a lot of fun Elfing on the Shelfing. The elf was her idea in the first place. She (I mean, Santa) is the one who delivered our elf to us. So while she had all three of our children for four days and four nights, she got to have a fair bit of her own EOTS fun.


I may very well have the order wrong, but we'll just call this the first night. Banoffee having a marshmallow snow ball fight with Mom's snowmen. Mom has a serious snowman problem collection.


Night two or something. Banoffee gets out the red dry erase marker and Rudolphs all the photos. Classic Elf on the Shelfiness.


Banoffee and his gang of snowthugs play a dangerous game of Texas Hold'em. Or it might have been Go Fish.


The final night. Banoffee gets greedy with the candy canes and steals them off the tree, placing them up high where no one can reach them. Or so he thought. He forgot he is only six inches tall, but human beings are closer to six feet. Oh well, it was a valiant effort.

Since arriving back home, he's been caught doing this:


And this.


First rummaging through our suitcases to see if we brought him anything back. (We didn't.)

Then (probably in spite) he made a mess of the bathroom mirror. But who could stay mad at an elf who writes "I *heart* U" to your kids on the mirror with toothpaste?

(And then who could stay mad at a little birthday girl who writes him back... also in toothpaste?)


Which brings us to our birthday girl.

My little Lolly, my middle child, my hard-headed, determined, free spirited, wild child turned five. Five! See, in my head, my daughters are still five and three... Now that Lolly is the five year old and Fifi is almost seven, I really have to make that shift in my head. Maybe now they will stay five and seven until Lolly takes seven over. Although, come to think of it, that shouldn't be a problem after all. Lolly has promised us that she is going to stop growing now and stay five forever, which is pretty cool because buying new clothes all the time for small growing people really sucks.

We celebrated Lolly's birthday at the start of the month, so today was pretty low key in terms of party action. When she woke up, we all sang Happy Birthday to her (even Jaguar jabbered along). She also got phone calls from my dad, my mom and Scott's mom singing Happy Birthday, along with several Facebook messages, which she loved. For lunch, I packed some bento boxes and took her up to my step-dad's work where we met him and my mom. On the way home, we stopped into Walmart for toilet paper and got suckered into wandering past a table set up with loads of toys. I found a Despicable Me 2 100 piece jigsaw puzzle, and it was so cute (and cheap) that I handed it to Lolly right there in the shop and said, 'Happy birthday.' She was as happy as anything.

Sidebar: Before you think I'm an awful mother, she'd already gotten her birthday presents from us at her birthday party. But I did feel a bit badly about her not getting anything on the actual day. End Sidebar.

We came home, the kids played outside in the gorgeous warm December weather, and I baked a chocolate birthday cake for her. Scott came home, and while the cake cooled, we all went out to Zaxby's for her birthday dinner. This was also our Advent Activity for the day. Lolly was a bit miffed we didn't go to The Mean Pig for her birthday dinner, as she requested, and which truly is our favourite place to eat, but dude, Zaxby's does Kids Eat Free on Wednesdays, so I mean, that was a no brainer. Feed a family of five on $13? Um, yes please. She was happy when she got there anyway, and we had a lovely, fairly stress-free family night out.


Then we came home and ate caaaaake.


So to my little Lolly, for you to read many years down the road, you are the awesomest kid ever, and you are also the most unmanageable. You cannot be controlled, so instead of trying, all we hope to do is usher you in the right direction. We think you are going to be so incredible as a teenager and are also frightened for our lives. If you don't become a mad scientist or a CEO or a political activist, it is probably because you are doing something else so unexpected that you are totally blowing our minds. We'll be proud of you no matter what. We currently ARE proud of you. We love you, our darling, perpetually-five, little girl.

From this...

...To this.  Love.