The Banana: One Decade of Age

The Banana’s birthday sometimes gets crunched.  It falls during the second week of school, which is always the week where everything gets crazy because homework starts and activities start, and my music students start, and no one has their “school routine” legs under them yet.  Last year her birthday was on a Tuesday, and this year, because of leap year, it was on a Thursday.  Tuesdays and Thursdays are particularly difficult days to have a birthday around here. Even though her birthday was not relaxing and “Banana centered,”  she is a flexible girl, and still had a good day.

We were up with the sun for breakfast in the bathtub, which was DONUTS!  Who can pass up donuts for breakfast in the bathtub?  Yum.

Take a look at the satisfied people in this next image who have received their sugary treat, and the begging hands of the next in line.  Ha!  I love it. 

The Banana savors her eating experience. Unlike most of the other people in our family who shovel in their food and then are itching to get to the next thing to do, she takes her time at a meal and enjoys table conversation.  She enjoys each bite of food.  After three minutes in the bathtub her siblings had snarfed down their donuts and were getting dressed for school.  She looked up from her donut with a sad look in the bathtub.  “Everybody left you!”  I said.  So Dr. Peds crawled in the bathtub with her and tried to steal the last part of her donut. Love.

There were morning presents, and a special birthday lunch was packed up in her lunch box.  She requested hard boiled eggs and pasta vegetable salad.  

The Banana spent most of her day in school.  In the afternoon she played with friends in our yard while I was teaching.  The evening was a bit crazy because YaYa had to get to a piano lesson and we had a birthday supper to cook and our neighbors were at our house already, which worked great for cake-eating.  Dr. Peds drove YaYa to her lesson, which meant that I was in charge of supper, but unfortunately The Banana picked sliced polenta and sunny side eggs for her birthday supper, and that is not a meal I usually make.  It’s a Dr. Peds specialty.  So, I asked The Banana herself and Mr. SP to come and help me figure it out, and they ended up taking over and cooking the whole meal themselves.  It was wild and crazy and wonderful.  There were a few false starts with the sunny side eggs, but Mr. SP totally figured it out and nailed it.  The Banana was in charge of the polenta.

After a quick work at eating all of the supper food (they did save YaYa a couple of eggs, but Dr. Peds missed out entirely) it was time to take out the chocolate cake, which miraculously survived the afternoon unscathed by little fingers.  We couldn’t find the candle lighter, and the crowd  was getting restless, very restless, waiting for cake at the dining room table, so Dr. Peds hauled in the propane torch to light the candles.

That was a little nerve wracking for me.

This is how everyone should receive a flaming cake. 

In our family it’s a tradition to sing “Happy Birthday” as badly and crazily as possible.  Always fun.  Always ear splitting loud. 

We spent the last few minutes of her waking birthday studying states and capitals for her big test today.  She’s a girl who buckles down and works hard even on her birthday.  What a joy!