Sayer's 4th birthday

I do not know where the time went.

Yesterday was Sayer's 4th birthday. When she woke up I whispered 'happy birthday' to her and her eyes got wide and she said 'today?' I told her yep - now go tell daddy she was 4 years old. So she climbed out of bed and ran to tell him and he got all literal and said 'well you weren't born until the afternoon, so you're not quite 4 yet.' So she came back to bed and said she wasn't 4 and climbed in and snuggled me for a bit. Mark came in laughingly apologizing for upsetting Sayer, but she wasn't upset, just confused.

Anyway, then we all got up and I made her a cake (pumpkin, at her request, though about 2 days before her birthday she decided that she'd rather have a strawberry cake ... I already had all the pumpkin cake stuff ready since she'd been asking for it since Halloween ...). Sayer and Duncan watched a little bit of a parade and got bored. They got a bath. Then Duncan went down for a nap and Sayer had lunch and I told her that when Duncan woke up we'd do cake and presents. Heck, that would make it early afternoon and it could really be her birthday - even by Mark's persnickety standards :)

So when Duncan woke I had him help me put the cake on the table, put the candles in it, and put the presents on the table behind it. Then he went to get Sayer and Mark and bring them out to the kitchen. Sayer and Duncan struggled mightily to blow those candles out and finally asked for an assist from Mark. Then we ate our cake and got the dishes out of the way and proceeded to the birthday gifts.

She got Connectagons and a cute Jumping Pixies game and a twirling paper craft book ... and a sock monkey doll dressed as a ballerina, and a pretend-play tutu, with a plastic crown that hurt her head so i clipped off the pointy parts and now it won't stay on ... she got a Disney princess plastic bag with a little brush and hand mirror and a bunch of terricloth scrunchies, and a Hollie Hobby paper doll kit and a flower pinwheel that came with paints to be decorated.

She and Duncan immediately dove into the painting project. And they've played with the connectagons and had fun with them. And they both liked the pixies game, though the skill needed for it is definitely beyond Duncan but will be just right for Sayer after a dozen or so practice games. And she's worn the tutu and danced around with the ballerina sock monkey ...

Later in the evening Mark put in a DVD he'd gotten for Solstice and the kids gravitated to the TV and became utterly enthralled with Samurai Jack. So we had a Samurai Jack marathon until bedtime.

All day long I kept reminding Sayer that she was 4 and that this day was the last chance she'd have to nurse since we'd been discussing and agreeing for about 6 months that she'd stop nursing at 4. I offered her boobies a couple times and she said no thank you. She was to the point where for the last month or so she was only nursing about once every 4-5 days ... I'm a bit bummed that she said no yesterday because I wanted a picture. We'll have to wait and see if the agreement to not nurse again ever is really understood. If she asks and I say no I wonder if there will be complaining ...

That was my baby girl's birthday. Four years old. Ack!