Even though her party isn’t officially until Saturday, I wanted to do a little something for Grace’s birthday.

She already knows that birthdays are special days, so I wanted to make hers memorable.

Donuts for breakfast. A treat to share with her friends at day care. A trip to a local farm to visit the cheekens (chickens), geeses (geese), kerkeys (turkeys), doodle dos (roosters), and gee hens (guinea hens). A special supper of hot dogs and French fries. Cake with candles and a couple of presents. Singing “Hacky birday to Gracie” at every possible opportunity.

If any of these were normal events, it wouldn’t have been such a special day.

I’m happy to say that Aunt Amanda joined us for most of the day, and we spent some nice time with Grandma and Pappy, too.

Birthday Presents

You already knew that Grace loves her People. That is a Little People birthday set.

Knowing that she’s really into pretend playing with normal objects, I also had a birthday cake present for her.

I didn’t get a nice picture of her with her new recorder. Remember recorders? They’re like little clarinets made of plastic, and they toot like whistles when you don’t yet understand how to make notes.

I have been holding on to these gifts since before Christmas. The Little People set was free with a certain dollar purchase at FisherPrice.com, so I tucked it into my gift box in the hall closet. I won a gift certificate for an online store months ago that I used to get some Melissa & Doug sets, including this Birthday Party set. I found the recorder in a clearance bin at the craft store. I think it was a buck or two.

Two dollars for all of these toys. What a joy to share with my baby (you know, the one who’s not a baby at all these days).

Birthday Cake

Grace loves purple. She will chose purple over any other color any time.

See that little drip of frosting on the right side? It makes me think of Mrs. Doubtfire every time I see it.

Because I’m not able to get around like I normally would, I asked Joe to pick up a white cake mix and a container of white frosting with sprinkles. He did.

I dyed them both purple. That was not as successful as I would have liked.

Neither Joe nor myself thought to buy any birthday candles, so we were (quietly) panicking at the last minute. We found this Elmo candle left over from last year, and Grace was none the wiser.

We sang, and Grace blew out the candle all by herself.

I didn’t think she’d be able to do it, but she did. Yet another example of how quickly my baby is growing up.

It took some prodding, but she finally stuck her fingers in the icing.

In attempting to dye the cake purple, I overbeat it into oblivion, and it tasted like plastic. It fell on itself, shrunk to half the size of the pan, and was generally terrible. Grace didn’t mind at all.

She went to bed more than an hour later than normal. We packed a lot of fun into this one quiet day.

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