No more babies

Rebecca turned 8 this weekend. When she came downstairs on her birthday she gave me a huge hug and I realized my littlest baby had seemingly overnight turned into a big kid. She asked to go to Cracker Barrel for her birthday dinner; my parents had given her a gift card for dinner there because they know how much she loves their mac-n-cheese. That’s exactly what she ordered, along with chocolate milk. Mac-n-cheese and chocolate milk… Well, it was her birthday dinner.

When we’d finished she asked if we could walk around the restaurant’s country store. The refrain of the day had been, “It’s your day!” so she got to look around for a long time. Poor kid; she is always being rushed everywhere we go because she is so slow. So. Slow. But Sean and I vowed to not rush her or ask her to hurry up all weekend. She appreciated it and I think we learned a valuable lesson; she is not the kind of kid who will ever be fast. We need to adjust our expectations and departure times. If we need to leave at noon, we need to give her at least an hour’s head’s up. We’ve been trying to give her a bit more time to get ready but I think a good hour is actually her comfort zone.

You’d think after 8 years we would have figured that out.

We had three of her neighborhood friends over on Sunday for cupcakes and ice cream. They are sweet girls and all four got along fine. Rascle (that’s how Rebecca spells his name) got a serious work-out as each of the girls wanted to hold him. And Rebecca received several gifts she can use with her little pet. There has never been a more loved hamster.

So it was a good, full weekend. Rebecca loved turning 8, “Finally!” as she said. We tried to explain this year had the same number of days as last, but she was convinced it took longer to turn 8 than any of her other years. Of course, this year has an extra day the end of this week; I hope she forgets that by next February.

This is a car for Rascle to drive around...

this track. It needs to stay on the hardwood floor because he is an animal and animals do not wear diapers. And, of course, he peed when the car was on the carpet part. Lovely. This is why I like fish.