On Wednesday we celebrated our maknae turning 4 YEARS OLD!! I cannot believe that it’s been 4 years since she was born .. those years truly FLEW by. She was born in this house (literally in our room) and today she is the sassiest, funniest, most entertaining child. She kept exclaiming all day – “I can’t BELIEVE I’m 4 years old! I can’t BELIEVE it!” like she was about to turn 100 or something LOL. I love her.
The day started as all birthdays in this family do – a bouquet of birthday balloons and a stack of presents waiting in front of birthday girl’s door 🙂
The presents are a combination of gifts from us, from her halmoni/harabuji, and from her uncle/auntie/cousins. She woke up and was so excited to see all the things waiting for her … funny story – the big round balloon sings Happy Birthday when you tap it. When J first went to Party City to pick up the balloons, I asked him if the big one sings, as in, did you test it out because I knew I’d paid for a singing balloon. He said naw, it’s fine … then gets home and we realize the singing balloon is broken and DOESN’T SING. So he had to GO BACK and get them to replace that one hahaha. Lesson: always listen to your wife 😉
I usually do pancakes as a special birthday breakfast for my kiddos but they’ve all been really into waffles lately so we did waffles & bacon for A’s birthday instead. And it’s a little obnoxious but on my kids’ actual birthdays, we sing Happy Birthday with candles to them in the morning with breakfast AND after dinner with cake. So here’s A with her birthday breakfast and 4 candles. Look how proud she is to have blown out her 4 candles!! 🥺
After breakfast, the majority of the day was much like any other Wednesday … she still had to go to school so she got ready and left. My mother in law was like – you sent her to SCHOOL on her BIRTHDAY? I guess because she’s only 4 and it’s not like she has to be there every day? But I was like yea! I have things to do today still! The world doesn’t stop because it’s her birthday! 😂 I didn’t feel too bad though because we did have a big party/playdate over the weekend for her.
Originally, J & I were planning on picking her up early from school and taking her out to lunch with just us two for some special mommy & daddy time for her birthday but J got pulled into a last minute lunchtime meeting so we nixed that plan. I picked her up after school and the first thing she wanted to do once we got home was, of course, open that stack of presents from the morning.
I think 4 years old is SUCH a fun age. She was able to open all her presents by herself (in past years, she’s struggled with the finger dexterity to rip the paper off completely) and was SOOOO excited with everything she got. There was lots of jewelry, clothes, princess things … IYKYK.
Then we had to go pick up her big brother & sister from school and we spent the afternoon just playing/the big kids had some extra-curriculars to go to. It was overall pretty chill until dinner time. For dinner, we all went out to eat INDOORS at one of A’s favorite restaurants. I always let the birthday kid pick what they want to eat for dinner and when I asked A, she said pasta & meatballs. Go figure, that’s been her favorite food for her entire 4 years of life so we always end up at the same restaurant for her birthday every year. Last year, the pandemic had just hit so we did take out and I set up our dining table at home like a party table with decorations and we just ate at home. This year, J asked me if I wanted to do that again but psssst: it’s way more work for me to do it that way. So I said naw and we headed out to the restaurant.
In the car as we were driving, I pulled out my phone to take a family selfie and A saw the camera and yelled out “TIK TOK TUUEEEESSSDAYYY!” HAHAHAHA. If you don’t follow me on IG, you won’t know what I’m talking about .. but it’s a thing.
Everyone happy to be eating indoors. E took the picture of J & I together!
Post dinner.
Then we went home and did one final birthday song & cake. The kids FaceTimed with cousins and then dug into the cake. I had a wild mom moment and decided not to cut & serve the cake. I just plopped it onto our coffee table, gave them forks, and told them to go to town 😂 Oh! And funny thing about this cake. I’d already done a fancy custom (unicorn) cake for A’s birthday party over the weekend so for her actual birthday, I was planning to just go to the grocery store and get any cake and add writing to it. I did that for J’s birthday at the end of February and didn’t have any issues. But when I went for A’s birthday, I was told by the grocery store that they can’t do writing on cakes anymore because of COVID …? Compared to the end of Feb when it was J’s birthday, things have loosened up significantly in the Bay Area so I’m not sure why they could do it 6 weeks ago but not now. Anyway, they offered to put the writing on a little piece of plastic that I’d have to stick onto the cake by myself at home. I said sure and … that’s what you see. The plastic was too big for the cake so it pokes out over the edges hahaha. Talk about ghetto.
And that’s it! That’s how we celebrated our maknae turning 4 … at the end of the night, the kids were all just playing/doodling and E came out of her room with her hair looking CRAZY. I thought for a second she’d stuck a bunch of tiny hair ties into her hair because it was sticking up in all these really odd directions.
Nope.
Turns out she put SLIME in her hair.
It took J 30+ minutes of rinsing with olive oil & conditioner to get it all out.
And THAT was truly the end of our night. Memorable 😉
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