Happy Fourth Birthday to The Banana

Birthday breakfast in the bathtub comes oh so early when your big brother and big sister need to catch the bus for school.  The Banana was tired, so tired she could hardly totter into the bathroom, and she just wasn’t up for the idea of crawling into the tub, so she decided to just watch the others in the tub and eat her breakfast on the potty.  Please note her monkey pajama pants and horse pajama shirt.  The Banana dresses for bed in style.

It was quite the breakfast:  granola and yogurt (just yogurt for Mr. SP who was recovering from a nasty, nasty sore throat).  The big kidlets were happy to be in the bathtub.  The cat was happy to be in the sink, which everyone found hilarious.

The Banana perked up considerably at the prospect of some crack-of-dawn present opening.  She was excited about each and every gift, and ready to open the next one as soon as possible, of course.  There was a special decorate-your-own diva mirror from Ya Ya, some really neat picture books, a fun pigeon t-shirt (from the Mo Willems pigeon books) magnetic princess dolls (she named the princess “Hallelujah”) and a cash register.  She loved the cash register.  She’s been playing “garage sale” a lot lately, which involves strewing all sorts of things around the living room and waiting for pretend customers to come and buy the stuff.  She sits and runs the calculator.  The cash register was a big deal.  She loves writing out receipts.

There were birthday balloons, of course.  Birthday balloons are extremely important to The Banana, and they were at the top of her list about how she wanted her birthday to pan out.

She wore these socks to preschool for her birthday.  You may or may not know already that The Banana never, ever wears matching socks.  She long ago declared, “Auntie Dot doesn’t match.  I don’t want my socks to match.”  I don’t even bother to match up socks anymore when I do the laundry, because she pulls them apart and creates her own pairs anyway.

The Banana requested a chocolate birthday cake, so I decided to go all out and make a fancy one from a recipe (although there was a cake mix in the recipe, so I don’t know if that counts as making a cake from scratch).  It was actually one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever had, and it looked very fancy, which The Banana loved.  My friend from up the street let me borrow her super amazing round cake pans that are very, very old.  I wish they weren’t so old because I know I’ll never find round cake pans like them.

We waited to have cake until right before bed, when our good friends from Montana came to spend the night.  We got to know them in residency in Wisconsin, and it was a super great treat to have them here.  It was an exciting end to a terrific day, with lots of pitter pattering all around the house from little feet.  Everyone got to sign the birthday table cloth before we blew out the candles.  The Banana needed just a little help from the big sister.