C turns one

Our littlest darling turned one last week. Hovering on the cusp of babyhood and toddlerdom - one! Or twelve months, or 365 days, or 52 weeks, as we have been discussing with E, who was somewhat perplexed as to why I was still saying C was 11 months old when it was her birthday in a few days.

At one, C, you cannot yet walk, but you can crawl as though turbo-charged, and take steps with the furniture, and reach all sorts of things we would rather you could not. (Want the volume on the stereo cranked to maximum? C will sort it for you). I think the biggest change in the last few months has been in your language - you are never quiet! You can say mum-mum and da-da discriminately, and ca-ca (cat) and occasionally "up" and "more." A week or so ago you started saying "sa? sa?" which  we eventually figured out is "what's that?" You now say "sa? sa?" accompanied by an imperiously pointing finger, all day long. Whoever knew there was such interest to be found in household objects? What's that? The fridge. What's that? A photo of Mummy and Daddy on holidays. What's that? A light switch. All day long you - and we - are talking.

You celebrated your birthday week with a cold and so we have delayed your birthday lunch for the extended family until next weekend. But on your actual birthday Daddy stayed home, and we drove to South Perth, intending to go to the zoo. When we got there the line out the front must have been 100 people long. We had forgotten it was school holidays. So we went down to the river foreshore instead, and you crawled all over the grass, and E played on the playground, and we caught the ferry to the city and back, just for fun. 

We had cupcakes for morning tea and you had great fun pulling one to pieces (eating some) and smearing strawberry icing all over yourself. 

You're wearing tshirts and pants more than onesies these days, and looking a lot like a toddler rather than a baby. But you're still very sweet and cuddly, and still determinedly clinging to three (and sometimes four) milk feeds a day. 

Darling C, we all adore you. We look forward to  so many more birthdays with you.

E and her very Frozen fifth birthday

E turned five with a bang on Good Friday. After counting down for more than 100 sleeps we were finally there. We spent several months negotiating the list of invitees, from a starting point of every child in the class ("absolutely not!"), to all the pre-primary girls (it is a mixed kindy/pre-primary class), to two girls from school plus an assortment of playgroup friends and family friends (a total of nine plus E. Once they each brought one or two parents it was still quite a crowd!)

E is (...still...) Frozen obsessed and, accordingly, wanted the least original party theme around. At least when this is the case you don't have to waste time thinking up any ideas yourself, the internet is full of stuff just begging to be plagiarised. Her party food and activities involved a bit of time and effort on my part but minimal cost. Seeing as I was not keen to spend $500 so a lady dressed up as Elsa would sing Frozen songs in my living room, this suited me fine.

So we played musical statues (to the Frozen soundtrack, of course), hunted for blue and silver chocolate hearts (from the bulk food shop), decorated cardboard crowns, and pinned the nose on Olaf.

For food we handed out sandwiches (because "we finish each other's sandwiches"), carrot sticks ("reindeer food"), "snow cups" (popcorn in blue and white paper cups), "Queen Elsa's magic bread" (fairy bread), "snowballs" (marshmallows) and "melted snowman" (bottles of water with printed labels stolen from the internet). Also , seeing as Granny and Grandma kindly offered to bring them, "Arendelle's finest sausage rolls" and "samosas to warm your frozen heart." 

The cake was also a lesson in the art of negotiation, as I refused to use blue food colouring. I convinced E that snow was suitably themed, made two round butter cakes, sandwiched them together with jam and a thin layer of buttercream, slapped a whole lot more buttercream on top and marshmallows around the base. With some blue and white candles, and some printed characters on toothpicks, she was a happy little Elsa.

For party bags we handed out the ingredients to make your own snowman, plus Frozen sticker sheets courtesy of ebay, plus bead hearts made by E.

It was all pretty manic, but E was very happy and has said several times how much fun she had. Which seems like enough to set against a house that may never be glitter-free again.

In case it is of use to anyone, here are where all the internet-stolen goodies came from:

• Elsa crown templates;
• "Do you want to build a snowman" party bag toppers;
• Water bottle labels and cupcake labels (used to make food tags); and
• Happy birthday banner.