On Tuesday, my second-born–my first daughter–turned six. Six. I am not kidding when I say that every birthday is a sort of traumatic event for me. Oh, how I long to freeze time. In the past, I always consoled myself with the fact that if I froze time, there were other babies I wouldn’t get to meet. What if I had frozen time, for instance, when Q. turned one? I would never have gotten to meet O.
But, now that we cannot have more children, I find myself thinking that if they just wouldn’t grow up, I could reconcile myself to this.
But, grow up they must.
When E. turned six, it seemed like such a big deal. All the baby was gone, and here was this big-little boy.
Well. Now A. is six, and it seems like a big deal this time, too. Where did the time go? And why is she so tall?
As I look back on the year, I see a girl child who…
…learned to ride a bike without training wheels…
…worked hard at learning to read, and has come so far in twelve short months…
…dropped a lot (but not all) of the baby talk…
…still says “hanguhber” for “hamburger” and “sguhbetti” for “spaghetti”…
…laughed every. single. day….
…pretended to be a mommy…
…learned freestyle stroke in swimming…
…asked 1,030,027 good questions…
…brought a smile to many faces…
…climbed trees…
…lost her first tooth…
…grew out of toddler clothes forever…
…and then started wearing the same size (well, almost) as her older brother…
…learned to have a friend and be a friend…
…pondered becoming a vegetarian…
…twice…
…brought frogs in the house and dropped them on the office floor and then chased them…
…baby mice, too…
…took her first communion with a shining face…
…decided she wanted to marry either Superman or a policeman…
…pretended to be the virgin Mary and called her husband “Jofess”…
…went from being my flighty, scatter-brained child to one who consistently conquers in memory work…
…“lost” a duck…
…began to enjoy and follow chapter books being read aloud…
…told her first real joke…
…learned to narrate…
…proved herself a good sister many times, in many ways…
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| The Official Castle Cake |
What she wanted was a castle cake fit for a princess…
5 Comments
Thank you so much for the advice. I made a trial run today and, well, it looks a lot like the real snowmen we make. I might post a picture in a day or two.
Happy Birthday, A! Beautiful cake.
Sara, ANYTHING I made at that age was a disaster. 🙂
Almost everything I know about cakes is due to Si’s not-so-little-anymore sister who taught me a lot that she learned by working in a bakery in her late teens or early 20s.
I think the round metal bowls might work. For projects like that I’m always tempted to buy special pans. Wilton makes a ball cake pan that is perfectly round and made to stick together. You would definitely want to acquire some sort of metal rod to go down the center and hold it all together in addition to the frostion glue. They tend to sell things like that in cake decorating aisles in stores if you don’t have something like it on hand.
A snowman cake would be fun to frost, though. All white, and maybe shredded coconut if that is palatable for you family…
Kristie, Thanks. I still want these kids to just stop and slow down but they are so insistent… 🙁
🙂
It *is* hard to believe! Happy birthday to her and congrats to you on another beautiful cake! =) (And I’ll tuck the idea away for later…)
Sometimes I think it’s weird that time only moves in one direction.
That cake is really pretty. I tried making a castle cake when I was about nine. Disaster. Disaster that I shared with my third grade class. *sigh*
I’ve been thinking of you and your mad cake skills since my soon-to-be-four-year-old asked for a snowman cake. Do you think I can bake cake in round metal bowls and then stick them together with frosting?