Kalina is 5?!?!!!

Kalina and her girls! (Minus a few.)

Kalina is 5! In fact, she is very 5! Sometimes it seems as though she's been 5 for months, but it's now official. Five is the age at which you take on more "big-kid" traits, like fixing your own breakfast, perhaps (and with any luck, your little sister's, and then gets you both ready for preschool, while Mommy takes care of the new baby), and fewer "little-kid" ones, like needing to be told to say "thank you," hopefully. It's a strange thing, having a "big kid!" But just in time, right?

Actually, Kalina has been acting "big" for a long, long time now. Not only is she ultra-responsible about everything from bedtime to removing her shoes each and every time she enters a house (LOVE that!), but she's an amazing big sister who has trained her little sister well in similar areas. And equally "big" is her heart, which has her playing sweetly with babies (whether animal or human), attending to her sister's needs (especially the purple ones), praying whenever we hear sirens and usually preferring "having conversations" with people over playing. I do not remember how this all happened, I'm just gratified that it did! She's incredible.

Birthday Girl and Birthday Girl's
Sister headbands!

And there are milestones, of course. Kalina is now, officially, a reader--and has been for some months! Actually, probably since her early fours, but she really took off a couple months ago with a series called the Bob books and now not only can read, but likes it! I look forward with mixed feelings to the day when she can pick up a book and read it cover to cover--we may never see her again!

The girl can add, subtract and divide within reason, count far past 100 and talk in depth about the life cycle of a butterfly. She knows all her planets, in order, including which ones are gaseous and which ones are rocky. Kalina can now cut shapes out of paper and bites out of a pancake. Her attention span is unmatched in her age group (and even among some adults). Perhaps best, and hardest, of all, she knows how to be patient.

If you look closely, you can see how
the cake has rainbow colors!

Kalina is clearly amazing--so we did our best to have a birthday celebration to match!

Her special day landed on a Friday this year, and Kalina was in our room the second her clock turned green. Happy birthday, Sweetie!!! We started the morning with "rainbow" cereal (Lucky Charms happened to be offering extra special rainbow marshmallows last week at the grocery store), and moved quickly to opening a couple presents, one of which was Elise's.

I knew we needed to open Elise's present early, because otherwise the surprise would be (very good-naturedly) spoiled. In fact, it had already been spoiled once or twice in the week prior, although I'm not sure Kalina noticed. Besides, Kalina loves keeping things as a surprise, so maybe she was able to deny what she'd heard. The truth is, Elise was very excited about her gift for Kalina: ponies like the ones she has! She came up with the idea herself, possibly motivated by the fact that Kalina had been borrowing her ponies for quite some time. Amazingly, I'd recently seen a new pony book set, like Elise's but different, at a reasonable price, so I quickly purchased it. Just as I'd hoped, Kalina was every bit as excited as Elise. She dug right in, and the girls nicely combined their herds. Brilliant thinking, Elise!

Next on our agenda: a surprise big-girl outing for Kalina. It just so happened that the local theater company was performing Cinderella that morning. Cinderella...5-year-old girl...birthday--we had to be there. I bought the tickets and surprised Kalina with them. Elise, for her part, was happy to stay home with Grandpa--making a rainbow birthday card for Kalina, no less!

Kalina dressed up in her princessy Easter dress, and we headed to the show. Albeit a bit overwhelmed (there were some rather loud activities beforehand) and not wanting to let go of my hand for a second, she managed to win a "beautiful" plastic ring as a prize, and we got our picture taken! The performance was amazing, and well-suited to kids. Wowed by the fairy godmother, Cinderella and her prince, Kalina even helped the rest of the audience call the fairy godmother in Cinderella's moment of need. Her favorite parts? The magical parts, and watching Cinderella dance with the prince. After the show, we took her picture with the fairy godmother--and near Cinderella, who was utterly swamped by a posse of pint-sized princesses, of which Kalina was the most patient.

Painting a suncatcher!

Back at home, it was time to make Kalina's birthday cake(s), including an "official" family cake and cupcakes for the party the next day. Her theme was rainbows, so we carefully mixed the batter and divided it into six bowls, one for each color. Then we layered cakes and cupcakes until all the colors were used up. We'd tried this before, and have not been disappointed in the results--pretty and pretty easy!

Soon, Daddy was home, early, from work and Elise was awake. Grandpa arrived and we dug into presents! Our 5-year-old did, in fact, need to be told to say "thank you" after every gift. Maybe next year...? I believe each present was considered the "best ever," or possibly it's just really fun being five and opening a bunch of fun stuff.

Kalina had asked for crafts, books (that she could read herself, and also chapter books), pets, room decorations and big-kid toys. "But not little-kid toys, Mommy, and I'm going to be giving all my toys to Elise." This pretty much describes what our big girl received. Daddy gave her a butterfly house (five baby caterpillars arrive by mail), Grandpa and Uncle Tom provided some craft kits (already highly popular), Aunt Nancy got her a piggy bank shaped like an owl (Aunt Jeanie provided $5, and we also started an allowance for her!) and some books, and I found some Lego sets for her (one from my childhood!), some books and some paper dolls. We've thoroughly enjoyed slowly getting out each of them, except for the Legos, which she dove into with gusto.

The rainbow walk game.

Speaking of Legos, I had never noticed before that they are their own language. It's not a spoken one; it's visual. For instance, we wouldn't all have the same name for the 2-bump x 4-bump chunky block, but we know exactly what it is (it's a classic). I can proudly say that Kalina has made great strides in her fluency in the past few days. Bewildered at the start, I witnessed her expertly fly through some instructions yesterday for a pony stable, needing little help from me. Quite a sight to see! But I'm off topic...

We enjoyed homemade pizza for the birthday dinner, followed closely by rainbow birthday cake. But how do you convince a birthday girl she needs to go to bed? Fortunately, we had a rainbow party with friends the next morning to look forward to!

Look! 5 candles!

Giddy hardly begins to describe Kalina's enthusiastic mood in the morning as she welcomed her party guests. Tidal wave? Pack of screaming monkeys? The guests may have felt a bit overwhelmed, especially since a mini-tidal wave mimicked Big Sister's every move. After some hyper playtime and dancing to rainbow-themed music (and sunshine and lollipops), we painted rainbow suncatchers. Then it was time for games (pin the sun on the rainbow, anyone?) and a highly popular rainbow walk. As it turns out, when you randomly dish out candy and stickers for walking around in a circle, kids will play for a long, long time. Fortunately, we had plenty of candy and stickers (still do).

We then sat down to cupcakes, and I lit four candles. We were all inhaling to sing the first note of Happy Birthday, when I was kindly reminded by a friend that my daughter is now five. Oops!! We quickly remedied the problem, took a new picture, and soon Kalina was beaming while all her friends sang.

A rainbow lunch.

And then the girls all clustered around, but patiently watched, as Kalina opened her gifts. Again, each one was the best ever (although she did, unfortunately, at one point decide out loud that the birdhouse craft kit was actually the best). We've continued to enjoy getting out new crafts and toys. In fact, we're still doing it. (We also used her birthday money towards a Cinderella doll for Kalina--Mommy fielded half the cost--handing the purple Rapunzel princess she received to Elise--both girls were quite happy.)

Then it was time for everyone to go, and Kalina graciously waved them all out the door. Technically, the birthday was over, but we still had an afternoon of crafting and Lego building to keep us quite contentedly occupied.

What a fun party!

What a lovely birthday it was! But it's important to remember that Kalina's still not entirely grown up. She still very much believe in fairies, still calls me Mommy most of the time, still wants to cuddle up for story time, still makes up songs and dances, still plays with stuffed animals (thank goodness!) and still pronounces penguin, "pingwing." Kalina at five is every bit as precious as the day she was born, and we're still every bit as proud of and enraptured by her.

Happy, happy birthday--and a happy year ahead!