Crafting

Anna had a lovely little six year old girlie birthday party Wednesday.  The girls dressed up, wore flower leis, played with balloons, and skipped around the house.

This crafting kit shown above was one of her presents.  We started on it today.  Let me just say a few things here.  

#1.  I am not a crafty person.   I took the requisite home economics class in seventh grade, butchered a wrap around skirt, and haven't touched a sewing machine since.   I did three teeny tiny cross stitch Christmas ornaments twenty years ago, had to redo countless stitches,  and will never cross stitch again.  I struggled with handwriting and coloring through elementary school--gasp! Basically, my strong points do not include precision and repetition of small movements. 

#2.  The contents of this craft kit for my six year old:  one wooden basket, three small tubs of paint, one paint brush, one bundle of rafia, three styrofoam eggs, hundreds of dark green, light green, red, purple, and silver sequins, and thousands upon thousands of tiny pins.  

Here's a fun challenge:  Take a look at the picture above and guess which egg is Anna's, Justin's and mine.  Justin tried to encourage me when I took a break with, "That's pretty good for a half an hour's work, Mom."  He wasn't even trying to be sarcastic, and  yes, that is close to a half an hour's work.  

Oh, and the head of the pin is smaller than the sequin holes, so they fall off if you move the egg. And you move the egg pretty often.  

The kids did enjoy painting the basket.  And I need to think of something else (quickly) that would look cute nestled in the rafia that doesn't involve me sticking pins in styrofoam eggs for the next few days.

Birthday

We celebrated Anna's birthday Sunday afternoon.
The buildup to the actual birthday has been an emotional roller coaster for her (and us) . She has known for months that her birthday was on May 14. No problem there. But it became a problem on May 2nd. I picked Anna and Justin up from school at 11:30 as usual. And Anna began to sob. I carried her all the way home (seven minutes). The sobbing continued up the stairs and into the rocking chair. If you have never seen Anna cry, let me describe it for you. As tears run in streams down her face, she throws her head back in lament, and for added effect, her husky little voice cries out. It can be impressive. People on the street stared wondering, I'm sure, what I had denied my child to bring on such pathos. Why the tears? "Me want it to be my birthday NOW!" You see, she knew it was May, and the actual numbers were not important.

Days later we had another, albeit smaller, crisis complete with tears. This time, "Me want to be five on my birthday." I spent some unproductive time explaining that four has to come before five. More sniffles. More tears. So I finally thought to ask why she needed to be five. The answer? Because five year olds wear necklaces. So I assured her that four year olds can wear necklaces, and she cheered right up.
She relished opening her family presents in the morning and asked where the rest were when she was done. In the afternoon our neighbors and some of Anna's favorite Big Girls celebrated at our park. Anna opened more presents (another necklace!), ate cake, played, and wore a flower crown. A good day to be four.