Fancy, Fabulous and Five

I find it hard to believe that I am writing a post about Mara, my baby, the caboose of our troop, turning five years old.  That's partially because I have been fairly certain that either she or I would not survive to see age 5...and also because somehow time has moved at lightning speed since she has come to join our family.  Maybe that's the pace of life with three kids, or maybe it's me getting older, or maybe it's just what happens in this season of mothering my people, but whatever the cause, I find it difficult to wrap my head around the fact that she is five.

Mara's birthday fell on Thursday of last week, dreaded Thursday, the day of the week when I think I cannot put one foot in front of the other any more.  We desperately tried to make it special for her, but I think even she knew that she had drawn the short straw with a Thursday birthday.  She took some yummy cupcakes to school to share with her class and proudly wore her purple crown that Mrs. Deitrick had given to her.  And she made sure to point out to her dance teacher that it was her birthday that day when we went to ballet class.  And she got some extra snuggles before bed time.  But she was most looking forward to celebrating her birthday with her party on Saturday.

She had requested a "fancy" birthday, citing rationale that she loves to be fancy, and wear jewelry and have nice outfits.  I wasn't exactly sure where to go with that idea for a party theme, but I set about my research with the help of Google and Amazon and the Target dollar section.  I have to say, I about half impressed myself with what we managed to pull together.  I found her a shirt on Etsy that said, "Fancy, Fabulous and Five".  And so, with perfection like that, we were off to the races.  There was a lot of pretend jewelry, because there is not a piece of jewelry that our girl does not love.  She has no limits of acceptable numbers of accessories that one should wear at one time, and also does not subscribe to any theories about accessories needing to match anything else that she is wearing.  The more the better seems to be her motto.  So she seemed to have some fun with the rings and clip on earrings and necklaces that were around.  At one point, she was even dressing up Pap in some fancy dangly earrings.  I missed the picture, and because of that, may have retained my place in the family.  So we'll call that a win.

Our guest list was a little slim.  When we set the date for this party, it happened to hit the same day as  Emily's family's make-up Christmas party and so that knocked out our 5 favorite Mowry's and the best Happy Birthday singers we know.  Mara was definitely bummed when she realized that Kinley wasn't coming to her party.  And I'll say that Josh was none too thrilled either when he found out that Cooper wasn't going to be on hand to kick his behind in PlayStation basketball.  And it goes without saying that I was upset not to have an afternoon to spend with all of them!  But both sets of grandparents as well as Jason's sister and her husband and his son, Gage, were here.  Libby had to change her plans at the last minute due to a mysterious illness that Brooke was dealing with.  But we made sure to deliver some cake and goodies home for the girls when Nana and Pap returned to Lewistown that afternoon.  We sure did miss them.

Her cake had a fancy crown, and filled the requirements of being chocolate and fancy and pink.  I am a Mama baker who aims to hit all of the criteria on which I am being judged.  We tried a new chocolate cake recipe that was wonderful, even though I had some reservations about serving a cake to the kids that contained coffee, which this one did.  There were no children bouncing off of walls, so that was good news.  Also, my Mom, who abhors coffee (the smell, the taste, the potential cross contamination of a mug) said she couldn't taste it at all, which we were grateful for.  We'll definitely use that recipe again-- it was a winner for sure.

What kind of fancy party would it be without a little bubbly?  The kids all got a kick out of the "fancy" party glasses I found for them and loved the sparkling apple/grape juice that they got to drink from them.  I had underestimated what fun they would have with that.

We had a really nice day celebrating Mara Kate-- the child who challenges me more than any other, but who also melts my heart into a puddle.  I can't even explain her other than to say that she is a gift (sometimes one of humility and sometimes one of utter joy).  She is as stubborn as she is sensitive, obstinate as she is adorable, challenging as much as she is caring, particular as she is perfect.  Although I don't find anything at all easy about parenting any of the three of our children, I find Mara to be the biggest source of head scratching.  Things that worked with the others don't work with her, and she requires more love, more effort, more time and more patience than I sometimes think I have within me.  But she's taught me a lot in the past 5 years--- a lot about my limits, about the size of my love, and about the kind of mother I want and need to be for her.  So grateful for the way God rounded out our family, and so grateful for the opportunity to be Mara's mom.