The Basham Family: 5th Birthday Celebrations: The Middle and The End.

Lily's Happy 5th Birthday week continued with her "real birthday" celebration on Wednesday.

The day before her birthday, Lily was acting really pitiful and complaining of a stomach ache. All during that night before her birthday, she coughed and cried out in her sleep. I was really worried she'd wind up sick on her birthday. She she got up, you could tell she wasn't feeling 100%, but I think she was running on "birthday adrenaline" and didn't even try for a "stay home sick day."

She also insisted it was not her birthday yet and she was most definitely NOT five yet. While I have no idea why she was saying this, she was actually correct since she wasn't born until about 3:30 in the afternoon! When I told her that she was right, it wasn't actually her birthday yet, she kinda freaked out and began back-pedalling on her statement about it not being her birthday.

I dropped her off to school like any other day. Little did she know I would be back to join her for lunch. The week before, when it was her friend's birthday, I asked her if they sang Happy Birthday to Amaya. Lily told me that they did sing during lunch when Amaya's mommy came and had lunch with them and brought cupcakes. Doh! Thanks Amaya's mommy.

Actually, I'm being a bit sarcastic. It was actually pretty fun to go have lunch with the kiddos. Loud. But fun. Lily's face when she saw me walk in was absolutely priceless. She was so excited. The teachers knew I was coming so I think they strategically placed the kids so that Tyler's back would be to me and Lily. Tyler didn't even see me until lunch was almost over and we were about to sing Happy Birthday.

And then we ate cookies. With red sprinkles. And made a huge mess.

After school and work, we had supper at the family favorite pizza joint - Chicago's Pizza. Lily's choice. Much to Tyler's dismay who was desperately angling for a McDonald's Happy Meal. While there, we got a video from Aunt Katie of Ayden and Kenzie singing Happy Birthday to Lily. While Lily thoroughly enjoyed the video, she needed the sound muted a little...

The pizza place is on the other side of town and it takes about 20 minutes to drive home from there. Lily fell asleep in the car on the way home from her birthday dinner. It was pretty pitiful.

She did perk up a little when we got home and it was time for a birthday cupcake. Enter horrible mommy. Cupcake - check. Birthday candles - nope. Shit! How does one FORGET CANDLES FOR THEIR CHILD'S BIRTHDAY?!?! Uhhg. It's only the 3rd week of January and already I blew my chances for Mother of the Year. I thought I was going to be sick, I was so upset. Luckily, I think Lily was just too tired to care much and mostly just wanted to eat her cupcake.

After cupcakes, it was time for presents. Tyler was all up in Lily's bid-ness while she was opening presents. He wanted her to go faster. We got Lily a remote controlled car for Barbie dolls and a Girl Scout Cookie Oven - kind of like an Easy Bake Oven but for making your own Girl Scout Cookies.

We had bought Lily's birthday presents right after Christmas and had stashed them in attic. Or so I thought that's where we stashed them all. I've had a really rough couple weeks at work. Lots of late nights. We forgot to wrap Lily's presents until the very last second and so Joel did it ON her birthday before picking the kids up from daycare - I was still at work. So anyhow, when we got home from dinner and I saw that Joel had only wrapped two presents, I was all confused because I could have SWORN we got her more than that. But he said that was all that's in the attic and I couldn't for the life of me remember what else we got her, much less where the hell I stashed it. Thirty-five years old and already my brain is a pile of mush. So I was really bothered by this, but Lily was really excited about her Barbie car and oven and didn't seem to care about anything else. So we moved on with our week and I AGAIN forgot about these other presents.

Since it was so late, we didn't get a chance to try out the oven and had to save that for the next day, Thursday. I, once again for the umpteenth time already this year, was late getting home from work. The kids were driving Joel bat-shit crazy wanting to try the oven but he was trying to hold them of until I got home. The kids had eaten dinner but Joel and I had not and so they had to wait for us to eat too. While we were eating, Tyler decides to go ahead and bake the cookies himself by shoving the cookie dough packets, followed by the tray, into the toy oven. Which is fully enclosed except for the skinny slot. I really thought Joel was going to come unhinged. And we both thought the oven was ruined because we couldn't get the stuff back out of it. But a few deep breaths later, between the two of us, we managed to recover all the bits and pieces back out of the oven.

And then baking commenced. FINALLY.

Tyler swooped in and snatched TWO cookies and shoved them in his mouth so fast, I nearly missed it. Lily was like, "What the?!!? Where's my cookies!?"

I have to say, the cookies looked ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like traditional girl scout cookies. These were supposed to be Thin Mints. As far as taste, I would say they resembled Thin Mints a little bit but definitely not the same thing. At all. But still pretty yummy. For cookies baked by light bulb.

Friday afternoon brought the next birthday related activity. Manicures for both Lily and I! Lily's been asking for a while if she could go with me sometime and get her nails painted. I decided her 5th birthday was the perfect occasion.

She insisted that we have the same color and after about 10 minutes of looking, and looking, and looking she finally settled on one that I could also live with. Dark pink with sparkles.

I had made an appointment so that we could go at the same time. However, I didn't realize when I did this that we wouldn't be sitting next to one another. I kind of panicked and worried Lily wouldn't do it without me sitting next to her but that girl was not even a little bit anxious. The manicurist told me later, "She's a pro!"

And then on to the final birthday celebration of the week. The family gathering at the house. I tried to keep this pretty simple. I've mention many times already about how crazy busy work has been and I just couldn't take on too much more. Simple is what I could conceivably handle - and that's even considering having Joel's help. Without his help, "simple" could not even have been pulled off.