11

My lucky baby turned 11 yesterday. She made it all the way through 10 with no accidents or trips to the ER! 

This was the year she lost her heart to Scotland. She says she felt it the first morning she was there, walking outside into the cold July morning and smelling home. This was the year she started the swim team, learned to sew (the basics), and won $15,000 for her school with a kids’ business plan presentation. It was also the first time she got overconfident with her grades and started slacking off, then realized how far behind she had gotten and hid the evidence, becoming more and more miserable in the mornings when we checked her (falsified) homework planner, until we got a text from her teacher and had to spend a month making a catch-up plan with her - this was an important lesson. She did all the work, felt so relieved, and got a class award for kicking her butt into high gear and fixing the problem instead of giving up.

It was a good year.

For her birthday, she wanted to invite friends over for a tea party. I used to hang out with people and host kid parties all the time, but ever since things went to shit with our friend group on Maui I just… stopped. I don’t want to make friends while at work, don’t want to get to know the neighbors, and the kids live far enough away from their school friends that nobody can casually come over to hang out, so our house has become a private space. It was good to break out of routine and get some people in the house.

We planned and prepped and cleaned all week. The kids got hold of the embossing label maker I bought to organize my sketchbooks, and Zenny labeled the goody bags and cupcake boxes, while Leif stuck “PROP FOOD”, “DO NOT EAT”, and “MAY CAUSE CANCER” labels on all the candy in Gavin’s Easter care package. Analog technology for the win.

Tweens are fun, because they’re old enough to handle things like good china and label makers, but still kid enough to chase each other through the house with a foam cosplay ax. I made cupcakes from scratch, topped with gold chocolate coins and little toy cats, and set the table with appetizers, fancy cookies, and decaf chocolate tea with cream and sugar. We had craft kits and activities, and for 4 hours the girls ate and played and laughed, carrying the cats and chickens around like babies. It went off without a hitch. 

After waving goodbye to the girls, we drove to Kaneohe and had dinner, cake, and presents with grannie. She had a mishap with her pan sizes and accidentally made an ENORMOUS rainbow cake. It weighed about 10 pounds. She cringed when she showed me, but it was great. Nobody is ever going to be mad about having a massive homemade cake put down in front of them.

(That’s not a phone, it’s an MP3 player. No phone for her yet.)

It was all pretty great. I hope the next year is even better for her.