the six-year-old

Back to TGIFridays.... another kid getting older on me.

 Lucy is 6.

Sniff, sniff.

 She was a little different than Mia on her birthday.

She didn't want me to stop taking pictures of her.

 She wanted one of every expression.

 Now that's a bottom lip.

I'm proud to say, and I'm sure my mom could confirm, she got that from me.

TGIFridays is no cheap restaurant out here.

And they just got new menus - you know what that means.... higher prices.

But seeing as we don't have any more birthdays in the family for 7.5 months, we allowed a bit of splurge.  For example, Maddy had té frio - iced tea.

 It was a little large..... a sign that it was an American restaurant.

The fact that there was no ice in the iced tea was a sign that the restaurant itself was not actually in America (well, okay, technically it was - South America).

She thought she would be able to drink it all.

She couldn't.

Lucy was very excited about her birthday and very excited about getting spaghetti.

 Eric was not very excited about paying a lot of money for something that we can have at home.

He's a good German.

But it was, after all, her birthday.

Lucy told me that she wanted to eat her spaghetti like me.

This is what she came up with.

 I'm pretty sure that isn't how I do it... sticking both the knife and the fork in my mouth - at the same time! 

We'll have to work on the use of the knife a little bit.

In the car, Lucy asked if the people at the restaurant knew it was her birthday.

From the moment we sat down, she started asking when they where going to sing to her.

Throughout the meal she kept asking.

Finally she asked everyone to hurry up and finish eating so they would come with her cake and sing.

Finally the big moment came.

 Ah, the bliss.

Tambourine and everything.

 She was quite enthralled.... all that noise, just for her!

Not only that, but she got a big piece of chocolate cake with a previously used candle, just for her.

I didn't catch her in time to stop her from licking the end of the candle.  I guess it was already stuck in her cake anyway....

 She very kindly shared - but just with her siblings!

What's up with that?

I had to beg for a bite - reminding her that I didn't get to try Mia's cake when it was her birthday.

She begrudgingly conceded by handing me a teeny tiny piece on her spoon.

Well, at least she was pleased to share with the others!

I'm pretty sure that when I got home and looked in the mirror, I saw a new patch of grey hair and an extra wrinkle or two by my eyes.

My baby is six.