The spring birthday season culminated with Emma's birthday at the start of June. I can hardly believe this little gal of mine is nine! We have an apple tv and as a screensaver we have our photo library set to slideshow. We often watch the slideshow for a full half hour instead of turning on whatever show we were going to watch or turning off the television entirely. I love our slideshow although it kind of hurts me a little. Seeing the pictures of my kids as little babies and toddlers is achingly sweet. I can still just feel their little bodies in my arms and their warm chubby hands holding mine. I know, I know. Having little kids is super hard and exhausting and there are so many reasons I'm grateful to be in a new stage but I also really miss those littles. And now here's the youngest, already nine.
I was very very VERY happy when Emma told me that she didn't really want a birthday party. (Cue trumpets and fireworks! Yay for no party!) She just wanted to go out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with one friend. Oh YES that works for me. It was still a little crazy because all kids are slightly nuts on their birthdays and their friends go nuts right along with them. So our small party of three was still about the loudest bunch there.
We picked up Annie and headed to City Creek Mall to get on the waiting list at the restaurant. Here they are in the parking garage showing off their twinner braids:
After finding that we had a forty minute wait we decided to go to Claire's to do some poking around. Annie decided that she should dress up Emma in as much of the crap there as she could pile on. I was not enjoying this as the two nine year olds were trying to shred the store a bit, so I tried to reign them in and also pick up after them as fast as I could. I told them that after dinner we could come pick out one little trinket each since I wasn't having to do party bags for 12 kids.
The Cheesecake Factory knows what they're doing, to show off the cheesecakes in a sparkly display in the lobby. The gals had theirs all picked out before we were seated. Very excited.
I'm sure getting seated outside was helpful to the other patrons as the girls sang and bounced and giggled to their hearts delight. They ordered a little dinner and I held them back to one appetizer instead of the three they requested. It was still basically astronomical in price but yet less than a birthday party. And it just made Emma's day.
Grateful for a great friend!
The dinner outing was on Saturday, and Emma's birthday was actually on a Sunday. And my poor sweet sensitive Emma pretty much spent the whole of her birthday in tears. She cried and cried and cried. Emma was in mourning about not being 8 any more. She loved being 8. She loved being in 3rd grade, she loved her teacher, she loved getting baptized ....she felt like it was just all gone forever. I tried very hard to help her know that she wasn't losing anything, just adding another block on top of the beautiful tower. It kind of helped but she stayed teary for a while.
We had scones for breakfast and spent the morning making her a towering pink birthday cake. Obviously scones and a pink cake are helpful to you a new and distressed nine year old. Having grandparents and friends over for dinner is also helpful. Especially when that dinner is super awesome homemade ribs that I couldn't have guessed were going to turn out as deliciously as they did.
I'm happy to say that despite some tears our Emma had a happy birthday. It was fun to treat her to a decadent dinner out and some fun little birthday trinkets and legos. She seems to have adjusted to her new state of nine-ness even though she will still mention very occasionally that being eight was awesome.
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