Celebration: A Day (Mostly) In Pictures

In case you missed it, The Princess just turned six years old on the 11th of this month.  Since she was a wee one, she has not been able to deal with crowds, noise or parties in general.  Because of this, the last birthday party with more than five people in attendance was when she turned one.

Lately, though, The Princess has been showing off her developing self-calming skills and an amazing ability to cope with - and even, in some cases, enjoy - family parties.  Feeling adventurous, I decided a couple of months ago that we'd throw her a big party for her sixth birthday.

The party was this past Saturday, less than 24 hours after I stepped off a plane after spending the week working in San Francisco.  The festivities took place at Nana's house, where she and Auntie J absolutely knocked it out of the park.  Their parties are always amazing, and I have to say I am so thankful to the two of them for pulling this together for me.  I never, ever would have been able to do this without them...and not just because we live in an 800 square foot house!

We had about 20 people there, and The Princess did amazingly well.  She retreated to quiet spaces a few times, but for the most part she was involved in the party.  Running full tilt back and forth across the great room counts as being involved, right?  Right.  It's her party.  She can run if she wants to.

The theme was polka dots, and Nana and Auntie J found some amazingly adorable stuff.  Without further ado, here are a few of my favorite pictures:

The party room, including some of the coasters I crocheted (my contribution to the polka dot decorations).  The Princess's cousin K had fun running around and matching all the colors.

One of the lovely tables, decorated with polka dot whirly flowers, polka dot runners (handmade by my wonderful MIL and SIL), squiggly balls, Skittles, Smarties and Gummi Worms.  Oh, and some of my coasters, too.

I loved the whirly flowers.  What a cute idea for centerpieces!  You can also see the paper lanterns hanging from the chandelier in the background.  These gals are so clever.

Auntie J asked me eons ago for pictures - she had seen an idea online of putting up a banner of the birthday girl at all ages up until now, and I loved the idea.  Of course, I totally spaced on the pictures and completely forgot about it until I got there to see she had gone ahead with pics she already had.  Thank you, doll.  This is something I will cherish forever.

The dessert table: Oreos and Rice Krispy treats on the left, and homemade German Chocolate cake and yellow cake with cream cheese frosting (my contributions) on the right.  I love to bake, and I make everything from scratch because of my extremely inconvenient soy allergy.  It's nice to b able to share some of this stuff with more than just my little crew.

 

Loot pile!  She made out like a bandit.  Check out the fabulous polka dot birthday banner.

And here we are ripping into the presents.  This particular gift is from a beloved great auntie and great uncle, and it's a super-cool kid friendly MP3 player with an internal speaker and headphones.  The Princess smiles when I start the music and put the headphones on her, but she doesn't leave them on very long yet.  We'll work on using this a few minutes a day until she gets used to it.  I'm hoping it will join the ever-growing ranks of self-calming techniques she has begun to collect...and it would fit nicely in my purse!

I just had to include this one...from another beloved great auntie and uncle, she received a Fisher Price remote control and a V-Tech phone.  Both have buttons that light up and play music when pushed.  She is in love.

Singing to our girl.  I have to admit I got a little emotional here.  In the past, we've always sung Happy Birthday in our whisper voices.  This year, there were about 20 of us, and we sang at a normal volume.  She clapped with the rest of us and ran around for the rest of the afternoon singing the melody until we left to go home.

Another first: blowing out her birthday candles.  She has just learned how to blow within the last couple of months.  We brought out the cake, showed her what to do, and she did it.  Did you hear me?  She did it.  That last candle?  She blew it out all by herself.

Who doesn't love cake?

The four cousins.  From left to right, it's E, A, K and C (The Princess).  I just realized that if we were to put them in order from oldest to youngest, their initials would spell CAKE.  And, again, who doesn't love CAKE?

I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am of this little girl.  She did an amazing job at her birthday party, and I absolutely adore the fact that she is feeling more and more comfortable at these family gatherings.

Thanks again to Nana and J for pulling this together for me.  I owe you, ladies.

And, Pop?  Thanks for taking over my camera so I could be in the action. 

Cousin E's Birthday Party

Where does the time go?

I can hardly believe it's been a year since our beautiful goddaughter, E, was born.  Okay, well, it'll be a year tomorrow, but her party was this Saturday.

This generation of girls, with The Princess being the oldest and E the youngest (so far), well...they amaze me.  I love seeing how they interact with each other and assert their independence in their own little ways.  It seems like their personalities are ingrained almost from day one, and it really is a joy to sit back and observe them.

E, the Birthday Girl, showin' off her bunny ears.

K helping E out with the cake...E really wanted to see what she was doing.

The Princess and Nana

The more of these parties we go to, the more comfortable The Princess is with the huge rowdy group of folks we're lucky to call our family.

And, though I don't like to dwell on the negative, I've kind of felt as though I've been missing out the last few years.  The last big party we had for The Princess was at her own first birthday, for what should be fairly obvious reasons by this point.  I freely admit to my crying jag last year when I realized I wouldn't be able to throw a big party for her fifth birthday.  Five is one of the big milestone years in my family, and it broke my heart that I couldn't have the party, but it was more important to me for her to be comfortable.

Now, seeing how well she is interacting with everyone and self-regulating when she needs to, I'm starting to think there may be hope yet.

That's right.  We're going to have a birthday party this year.  Lord help us.  We'll probably ask everyone to sing in whispers, and she likely won't last more than a minute or two opening gifts, but we're gonna try it.

Here's hopin' there are half as many smiles that day as we saw this weekend.