Two Weeks of Birthday

Little Girl is 6 years old. It's hard to believe how quickly she's growing up. It seems like yesterday when she was that tiny five and a half pound baby, wearing preemie clothes that were enormous on her.

Anyhow, we celebrated a LOT. The weekend before her birthday was the big party. She shared it with a little friend, and they had it at a place full of inflatables. Baby Boy was there, of course, which was fortunate for the 20 adults who wanted to try out the Super Slide. We all took turns "borrowing" him, so we'd have an excuse to go down. Most of the kids thought nothing of it, but my cousin's stepdaughter gasped and said to her, "What are you doing!? You're my stepmother! You're not supposed to have fun!" :)

After the party, some of the family gathered at my parents' house for the Opening of the Gifts. It was like Christmas. I seriously do not remember birthdays being this big when I was young... Some of Little Girl's gifts included a kids' sewing machine (because she's been wanting to learn to sew like her great-grandmother), a glider, and a pogo stick. She's up to three hops.

On her actual birthday, Little Girl and Baby Boy went to a local small amusement park (accompanied by their parents, of course). I wasn't there, but I heard they had a wonderful time.

As mentioned in a previous post, Little Girl had requested that we have her birthday in South Dakota. An impossible request, but the very kind people at the Ingalls Homestead responded to it by sending some of South Dakota to her! Little Girl opened that extra special gift the other day, and received some wonderful gifts, including a stick of twisted hay grown on Ingalls land. (Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of twisting hay to burn when the family ran out of coal in The Long Winter.)

Baby Boy carried that hay around all evening. As a result, I now have pieces of Ingalls hay all over my living room floor that I am reluctant to vacuum up, though I know I'm going to have to! But come on!! It's INGALLS HAY. On my FLOOR. That is just cool! :) And Little Girl was very excited to receive such a special present, I think even more special because she got it a little later (due to some post office pickup issues) and it wasn't "lost" in all the other birthday fun. If you read this, THANK YOU, INGALLS HOMESTEAD!!!

I got a great "gift" of sorts too, this weekend. The last time I was in to visit, Baby Boy was starting to repeat a lot more words, and I was able to get him to imitate my name. This weekend, we were all eating dinner, and Baby Boy's highchair was beside my chair, and he looked over at me and started saying my name repeatedly, out of nowhere!! I was so shocked! So were his parents. We thought perhaps we were hearing things, but numerous times through the weekend, someone would point at me and ask him, "Who's that?" and without fail, he answered every time. So at last, Little Boy knows my name! Hooray! :)