Good as gold

I had never heard the term "golden birthday" until a couple of years ago.  Apparently it is the birthday when your age matches your birthdate.  Since I never knew about it, I never celebrated my own golden birthday (I was born on the 23rd of my month and I'm, uh, a couple years older than 23) nor Jack's (he was born on the 2nd).  Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not really into these made up celebrations, but it seemed noteworthy that this fourth day of the fourth month of the year marks my little girl's fourth birthday.

It is crazy to think that, in four short years, my sweet little baby has grown into a bright, fun, and funny little girl.  Violet makes friends very easily, but she is no pushover.  She more than holds her own against a sometimes imperious big brother.  I would say that she knows her own mind, because she can be pretty opinionated, except that she seems to have a hard time committing whenever she is given a choice.  It's like she's afraid of missing out on whatever choice she opts against, so she constantly switches up until the very last second.  Her favorite things to do are eat and watch TV, which sort of drives me batty, because I really think she likes the idea of eating more than the food.  She continually asks for food, but she rarely actually finishes it all - and then she asks for something else!

Since we apparently are "banning 'bossy,'" I will say that she tends to be, ahem, assertive with her more compliant friends and relatives when she wants to play a certain way.  I joke that she will probably grow up to be a movie director, because she is constantly inventing little scenes and scenarios that she wants us to act out.  They usually involve something like, "I say 'doggy,' you say 'ice cream,' I say 'I love you,' then you are sad because there is no ice cream and you cry, aright?"  Or "I'm the mommy and you're the baby, and you say 'ice cream' and I say 'doggy' and you drop the ice cream and then you cry and I say 'don't cry, baby,' aright?"  (Every complicated multi-step instruction ends with "aright?" said with a slightly Irish accent so that it sounds like "aroit.")

She is definitely my limit-tester.  If I explain a consequence for a bad choice to her, she always has to retort.  Typically it will be, "Violet, if you do x, you won't get to do y," where "y" will be something fun, like watch TV or have dessert.

"I do," she always says.

The few times I say, "Violet, if you do x, you will have to do z," where "z" is something not fun, like timeout or going straight to bed, she answers, "I don't."

There are other examples of her sass that I need to record for posterity, but that will be another post.

She recently started dance class, and she loves it.  She is a great listener and has so much fun.  We will probably start gymnastics next week, and I expect she will love that too.  Another favorite activity is going out to eat, even if she is the only child at a table full of adults.  My friends always marvel at how well-behaved she is at restaurants, and I say it's because she loves going out to eat so much and she knows I won't let her do it if she is naughty.  She has finally bonded with a few favorite toys.  She sleeps with a stuffed dog named Boo, and her current favorite baby dolls are named Judy and Charlie.  She received the movie "Frozen" at her birthday party, and she has watched it nearly every day since we got it.  It's fun hearing her (and her friends and her brother) singing the various songs from the movie.

We actually celebrated Violet's birthday with her friends a couple of weeks ago.  We had a nice, low-key (at least for us) birthday party in our backyard with a cookies and cream ice cream cake at Violet's request (our first store bought cake).  It was on a Monday so that it would be just Violet's little friends and not all their big brothers and sisters, who were in school.  Jack was feeling bad that he had to miss his sister's party, so we pulled him out of his school a little early so that he could attend.   The occasion was made extra special because Auntie Renee drove down to San Diego to celebrate with us.

I hadn't really planned anything for Violet's actual birthday except dinner at her favorite restaurant (Souplantation), but then I got to thinking that it would be fun to do something special.  For some reason, Violet has been talking a lot lately about the fact that she has never ridden on a pony before.  We don't get many opportunities to ride ponies around here.  The few times that Jack has done it has been at those traveling street carnival type things, like the pumpkin patch and the Living Nativity display, and once at a birthday party.  The last time he went, Violet didn't want to do it.  I told her that maybe we could try again this year, but I realized that it wouldn't be pumpkin patch season for quite a long time.

Jack has been on Spring Break all week, and we were just going to have a playdate with our friends Jake and Ryan today.  When I started talking with my friend Erin (Jake and Ryan's mom) about what we should do with the kids today, I mentioned that it would be cool if we could find a place where Violet could have her pony ride.  Lo and behold, Erin knew of a place.

The actual pony ride itself seemed a little boring to me.  They just had the pony walk the perimeter of a pretty small corral.  I had initially thought to have the kids ride 15 minutes each, but it quickly became clear that 7 1/2 minutes each was perfectly sufficient.  The little kids rode on a white pony named Chowder. The big boys rode on a brown horse named Cocoa.   I think the bigger boys thought it was a little slow, but I think Violet was thrilled.  After the ride, she asked me if she could have a horse in her backyard so that she could ride it every day.  I hope I didn't just create a monster.

Later that evening, Violet did have her Souplantation birthday dinner, even though I was still stuffed from her Mexican birthday lunch.  All in all, I think it was a pretty awesome way to celebrate the golden birthday of my golden little girl.

Happy birthday, sweet Violet!  I love you so much!