9th Birthday Party

It has been a long summer without my camera. Since my computer was out of commission for awhile too, there weren't any blog posts. The camera was expensive to fix, so I waited until I really needed it, for R's 9th birthday party. I'm so happy to have it back. It felt like one of my arms was missing.

We had her party at our neighborhood pool.


Suddenly the sky opened up, with rain and hail.




E caught a hailstone.


I captioned some of these pictures to send to family, but I forgot to save a version without captions.

That was a nice birthday memory--a rainbow just for R.

She wanted a wolf cake, with Oreo frosting. It was so much fun to make. She gets to keep the little wolf figurines and play with them. I bought the edible cupcake toppers on eBay.


Then the girls came back to our house for a slumber party. They are picking out books from the shelves D built for me, to hold my Dad's history scholar's library. R has commandeered some of the lower shelves for her own books.

Eleven girls in the basement!

Charlie wanted so badly to go downstairs. But he has a history of jumping on sleeping heads and licking faces.

Poor Charlie!

He got a lot of love in the morning.

The next morning, they opened presents and D made chocolate chip pancakes, the birthday girl's request.

D built this rope swing for R in the backyard. It swings you right into the bushes, and for some reason, every kid who comes over thinks that is just the most hysterically funny and entertaining thing.

It was fun to have a house full of girls for one night. You forget how little fourth graders are, until they are all swarming around you in the kitchen in their pj's, telling you exactly how much butter and salt they want on their own bag of popcorn. 

8th Birthday Party

Happy Birthday to our R!

Her kid party is in two weeks, but we had a family party on her actual birthday. She requested popcorn chicken, watermelon, Caesar salad, and sparkling grape juice.

First she had to finish her homework. Sad!

Lots of tulle hides how crooked the cake is. I was rushing to finish it before school pick-up.

Cookies & Cream ice cream!

Calico Critters for her dollhouse.


She fell in love with this stuffed raccoon from the grocery store. She begged us for it for a month.

Turning eight is momentous. She said, "I feel like a different person. I am in third grade and I am eight, all in the same week."

Rainy Day Red Balloon

A cool and rainy Sunday. The day was full of memories of our summer trips to Denver when I was little. The light in this picture is how that vanished childhood Denver looks in my dreams. I don't think it's all my imagination. It used to be greener and rainier than it is now.

Garden in the old house

I came across a cache of photos from two years ago, when R was three. She used to like to put on her lion costume and travel around the garden picking things before they were ripe. No matter how many times I pinned her down for bug repellant, she always had a mosquito bite swelling up somewhere on her face.

We had a nice garden in that house. Small, because only the side of the house got unfiltered sun, but big enough for some tomatoes and peppers and zucchini. In this picture, she is brandishing a banana pepper.

I admit that this week's lunches have been very dull.

Poley Bear Monday

R's school was off for Easter Monday, so we went to the zoo with our favorite curly-headed friends: my high school friend Margaret, and two of her three kids.

Walter is exactly one day younger than R.

R calls these poley bears.

Walter looks out for his little sister.


Comparing paws.

Happy Birthday D!

We love you. I can't find those 1966 baby pictures--I wanted to put one here. I'll keep looking.

No fancy lunch for the birthday boy today. Why didn't I think to do that. What a lame birthday for you so far. I will have to make tonight specTACular.

V.I.P. Week

Every kindergartener gets a chance to be V.I.P. for a week. They bring in a poster all about themselves, and a treat for the class. March 9 is R's week. Yesterday, she made gingerbread people for her class treat.



She rolled and cut and stuck on the raisin eyes and buttons, and I did the rest. Even though we had an extra two weeks because she was sick during her original VIP week, I was still up until 3 this morning finishing everything. Last-minuteness is such a terrible habit.


Some turned out cuter than others, I hope the kids don't compare.



All lined up and ready to go into the bag.


Her poster.

First Post

February, 2009. This month, my 5 year old starts kindergarten full time, and I start a blog. She is starting halfway through the year, because she kept begging us to go full-day. She said it would be "like having a play date all the time." So far, she likes it.

This is our life in our new (since June '08) house, just south of Denver.



Halloween '08. I didn't cut Papa Bear's eye holes big enough, but he was a good sport.



This is my R., feeding a lorikeet at the zoo last week. She is an Animal Girl. She wants to be a vet when she grows up.



She even likes goats.



This is my favorite baby picture of her. She was quite a baby. She kind of knew it all already. She was self-possessed and had a strong sense of her own dignity, but then she would lose it in epic colicky episodes. She had night terrors where she would stand up in her crib and scream and point into a dark corner until the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. It was always unsettling to catch her looking at you like this.



Here is the note she wrote to me last week, to say thank you for sending her to school full-day. Not bad for a five year old, sounding it out on her own!



Here she is with my Dad in December, this past Christmas. They have the same sense of humor but they like to talk about serious things too.



This is her best little school friend. They go to Catholic school and love to have free days where they don't have to wear their uniforms.




Now that R. is full day, I pack her a lunch for the first time. We used to sit at the kitchen table together while she ate leftovers from her dinged-up Peter Rabbit plate. I read that Japanese mothers pack elaborate bentos to show their love for their children. I don't think I will ever be making lifelike anime characters out of pepper strips and colored bonito flakes, but I love to make it healthy and appealing for her to eat. I miss her in the afternoons. Last week I volunteered in the art teacher's room, and she said "Oh yes, I cried the first time I ate lunch by myself."

I started taking pictures of her lunches, and it made me want to start a blog.