For at least a month before her birthday on the weekend, E would wake up and ask, “Am I four now?” The more often she asked – the closer it got to her birthday – the more dramatic her response to “No, not yet”. A slightly disappointed “Aww I want to be four!” progressed to a slightly angry “BUT I WANT TO BE FOUR NOW” which progressed to dramatic facepalms and “STILL?!?!” I assured her that I had wanted her to be born well before now, too, but her birthday would come along eventually. I don’t think that helped AT ALL but what can you do? I even tried showing her on a calendar and that just made it worse.

It finally, finally was her birthday. Her whole-body reaction of delight and relief and happiness when I could say “Yes” to her sleepy question – well, it made my day. We made her day as special as we could, with croissants for breakfast (family tradition passed along from my side); church (where the girls – the drama! – missed out on the usual post-church ice cream because somebody ELSE who was NOT turning four was actually celebrating being ordained for 40 years and put on a barbecue but thank goodness the girls’ favourite person – a lovely girl who is nearly 10 – was there and made a lovely fuss over E); seeing a favourite honorary Auntie at the play cafe for a babycino and treats and a big play; her request for dinner (sausages); and her choice of cake. 

Whenever I asked what sort of cake she wanted for the party, she gave me a different answer. For the cake for on her actual birthday to have with family, she wanted “a chocolate cake and strawberry cake”. When we went to Woollies on Saturday and were up to the cake department, she put on her fastest feet ever, zoomed over and pointed to the pavlova with strawberries on it. Ohhhhh. Phew. Easy. I love making cakes for my family for celebrations, but also, there was a lot on over the weekend and not having to add “make and decorate a cake for family” made me just that little bit less stressed.

Last year I had decreed that birthday parties could only happen every second year. If you turn an even number, you get a birthday party (which, admittedly, didn’t work out for S last year turning two.  Oops). E was looking forward to her mermaid birthday party in the park for over a year. Unfortunately, she is a summer baby and the weather often gets in the way. In the planning stages, we could see that the weather for the week leading up to her birthday weekend was set to be raining, so any parks in our area would be sodden messes. This would make for the best day ever in her whole entire life but I just couldn’t do it. Thankfully, daycare was quite happy to put on a little party this week. We sent in cake, balloons, party hats and party bags, and let them deal with it all. Win.

Well, almost win. When I was decorating the cake (a 5-layer rainbow cake with ‘violet’ icing and Frozen snowflake sprinkles, and panicking that I didn’t know if the icing was looking enough like violet to satisfy this all-shades-of-purple aficionado), I was a little bit sad that I wouldn’t be there celebrating her party with her. I wouldn’t get to see her excitement. I wouldn’t get to see her face. I wouldn’t get to see her put as much of a slice of cake as is humanly possible in her mouth and kind of sit with it for a while before, to my amazement, managing to chew and swallow before finishing off the rest of her slice. I wouldn’t get to wipe ‘violet’ icing off her cheeks or fingers. I would only be able to imagine her face as “Happy Birthday” was sung to her around a cake with candles alight, seeing her eyes down and eyebrows raised far up in such an E expression and the widest and most delighted smile on her face as she took in all this joy for her. All this joy because E finally turned four and we love her.