Brooklyn Turns 6

My youngest daughter has reached the ripe old age of six. Six! How did this happen? I'm not certain, as I tried every conceivable measure to prevent her from growing up, including [apparently] not feeding her. Since her birth six years ago, she has managed to gain 30 lbs. But at least she appears to be healthy, and she enjoys such pastimes as dancing, cooking and baking, singing, reading, drawing, and writing notes to me. She does not enjoy making her bed, being sick, or eating. (That last one is probably the most glaring difference between the two of us.) I love my spunky little firecracker! I love that she can stand up for herself, and I never have to worry about her even though she is small. No one will ever walk all over her! I love that she is so happy all the time, and gets excited about everything. She also has a great sense of humor and can always recognize a good joke! She is extremely smart and reads so well. She works so hard at it - I love how she elaborately sounds out the hard words with exaggerated facial expressions, under her breath first before saying it out loud. Her dancing is downright adorable, as is her singing. The cutest is when she sings "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Frozen. Here she is singing it with her new microphone that she got for her birthday.

On her actual birthday, Brooklyn had her kindergarten music concert. The performance was called "The Little Engine that Could Sing," which you probably recognize for the recent accolades it received at the Emmys. (Um... kidding.) Appropriately, Brooklyn was the little engine. I was so proud because, well, not that there are "small" or "large" parts in a kindergarten music program, but let's be honest, she was basically the star of the show. She was embarrassed because it was the "littlest" engine, and she thinks people think she is little. (Which she is... and if we're being honest, she was probably chosen for that part because she IS the littlest kindergartner!) She is so self-conscious about her size, and she complains all the time about people calling her little. They are not mean about it, and in fact people are constantly telling her how cute she is, but she is aware enough of her small size that she recognizes it as setting her apart. We just keep telling her that being cute is a compliment! Anyway I thought she made a cute little engine!

When it came to planning her birthday party, she informed me that she wanted to have a "Barbie Princess and the Pop Star" birthday party. Which, I'm told, is a Barbie movie. I even checked it out from the library, but I have not watched it myself. My kids, however, have had it memorized for months now - even Troy - I'm not quite sure how. This was a very difficult theme, especially since she wanted to invite a couple of boys. But, she said, "It's all right because for the boys it will be a ninja party." Ninja? Um yeah I didn't quite know where to go with that, so... no. I decided we'd just branch off in the "rock star" direction for the boys. It didn't go well. The boys did not really have fun. Next time, we will either have a decidedly non-gender-specific party theme, or we will not invite boys. I also really don't decorate for parties. I did hang up some balloons. Done and done. Oh, but I've been sick and barely have regained enough lung capacity to climb stairs, so the balloons were all blown up by Kate and the bike pump! Genius, I know.

Here is the cake she designed:

And here is the approximation I came up with:

Nailed it.

Kidding. I know it isn't a very accurate rendering, and I'm okay with that. And so was Brooklyn.

Brooklyn always asks for a pinata. I believe that this is the exclusive reason she has birthday parties in the first place - anything for an excuse for a pinata. And I always make them myself, because, well a bunch of kids are about to smash it with a stick! No need to be fancy or spend a lot of money on that, right??? This one was a microphone, if you couldn't tell (it is likely that you couldn't.)

For our activity, we decorated colorful guitars that were cut out of poster board by yours truly and my friend Rebecca whom I always recruit to help me throw all my parties (or to be more accurate, throw my parties for me while I stand there and look overwhelmed). Somehow I don't have pictures of these. I'll take one of the girls with their guitars later. I realize that was a weird craft. I don't know. What does one do at a "Barbie Princess and the Pop Star" birthday party, exactly?

One thing we did was karaoke! This was accomplished by clustering the girls in the kitchen with a couple toy microphones and standing them in front of a youtube collection of homemade karaoke videos of Disney songs. They loved it! Well, notice I said "the girls" participated in the karaoke part - the boys rolled their eyes and continued coloring their guitars while quietly singing along to "Let it Go" under their breath. Pretending like they were too cool for girly karaoke.

Uh oh, Nolan is ready for his midnight snack, so that's the end of my birthday party summary!