Ever Turned Six

Goose's birthday was on a Sunday this (last) year. Saturday we went to the Nutcracker (see earlier post) and then went late to the ward Christmas party. Sunday we had the McEwans and Wilsons over for ice cream cake. I didn't end up attempting all the flourishes on the cake (I was supposed to pipe whipped cream and hot fudge, which I've never done), but I was proud nonetheless.

Tiny liked it more than this grimace would suggest:

Wrenzy helped with presents.

I worked on Monday so that I could take Ever to a half-day horse camp in Bonsall on Tuesday. Anna Dubrovsky (Leela's mom) told me about it and suggested the girls might do it together for their birthdays. (Leela's birthday is December 18.) Ultimately they decided to sign Leela up for a different camp that week, but Ever wanted to go ahead alone. I love that she's not afraid to do things like that by herself. I think there were just three other girls there. Ever wasn't super talkative when I picked her up, but she liked it a lot - enough that she asked to go again the following week. 

That night we had Leela, Ella, Lelei, Luc, Amelie, and the Karner kids over for pizza, dessert, and a piñata . It was a nice, mellow night.

In keeping with tradition, there was some crying during piñata time. This is a terrible, unexciting video, taken during the happy times. I include it only because of my severe shortage of documentation of birthday festivities.

Ever is sweet, sensitive, competitive, silly, and incredibly bright. By Christmas break, she'd passed off all her "sight words" for the year. During the break, she finished first-grade Jiji math (the math program they use at school). I've been realizing recently just how smart she is. If she asks for something and I say, "Not now," she'll ask later and say, "You said we could have it later!" I have to think for a second and then go, "Wait a second. I said you couldn't have it then, but I didn't say for sure you could have it later." A few days ago I implemented a new procedure: if Ever doesn't get done what she needs to get done and get in bed by 7:00 P.M., then the number of minutes late she is is the number of minutes early she has to go to bed the next night. She LOVES staying up as late as possible, so I'm hoping I have finally found a way to motivate her. I'm so tired of nagging her about unpacking her backpack, cleaning her lunchbox, cleaning up her room, bathing, getting ready for bed, etc., only to have her ignore me, putz around, and then move as fast as a sloth when she finally begins the task. Anyway, the day after we first started this, she was dragging when I needed her to get ready for school. I told her that if she wasn't ready when we needed to leave, then she'd have to go to bed early that night. She responded that that didn't make sense; it made sense for her to have to go to bed early the night after she was up late, but what happened in the morning had nothing to do with bedtime. What six-year-old understands the concept of natural consequences like that? She keeps me on my toes, that's for sure. She's a wonderful big sister, and we're so glad she's ours.