My daughter turned seven a few weeks ago. Seven. All done with first grade, and off (or not off, depending on Many Factors) to second grade in a few short weeks. I cannot believe it. She is SO grown up.

The Birthday Girl

At seven, she seems to enjoy “crafting” more than any other activity. She defines “crafting” as drawing; sculpting with clay; sewing; creating clothing for her Barbies and stuffed animals out of scraps of fabric, fabric glue, and Velcro tape; or making a wide variety of things out of paper or cardboard. A confetti of paper, fabric, and cardboard scraps follows her from room to room, and we have had to invest in a craft mat to protect the table and floors from glue, tape, and clay residue. (It is useful insofar as she remembers to bring it with her to various crafting spaces in the house. I sense multiple craft mats in our future.)

She loves to sing and to listen to music of all kinds. She adores any and all animals, and any time we go for a walk or a bike ride, she makes friends with any dog owner we pass. Her day is absolutely made whenever she gets to pet a dog. (It is hard to stay socially distant while giving a good dog some pats, but we are working really hard at it.)

She has grown four inches since last year. She still loves dresses, but prefers pajamas during these long pandemic days. She adores the Story Pirates podcast and listens to episodes until she has them memorized. It is really expanding her vocabulary; one day I said something silly about maybe a chair or something walking over to her, and she gave me a withering look and said, “Mommy, it did NOT walk, it is INANIMATE.” Delightful.

She can truly and honest-to-goodness read, pretty much anything. But she is still what I would call a reluctant reader; she prefers to be read TO, and she gets frustrated if she encounters a single word she can’t read. She’s an intuitive reader, and so can “guess” what some surprisingly large words are, but other words trip her up because they aren’t sound-out-able (or, more often, she doesn’t feel like sounding them out). I am hopeful that the phase where she constantly has her nose stuck in a book is right around the corner, but…

She loves being active as much as she loves making a cardboard house for her Barbie’s cats, but lately I have to exert a lot of persuasion to get her outside and moving. Once out, she loves riding her bike and her scooter, playing (large, plastic, no-net) badminton and (beachball) volleyball with me in the backyard, collecting bugs, and swinging on her swingset. Her uncle and aunt gave her a bug collecting kit for her birthday and she loves to put on all the accessories and seek out sow bugs and spiders and beetles from the darkest corners of our yard.

She still eats almost nothing. I don’t mean volume – she eats a good amount of food. I mean variety. She eats a lot of chicken nuggets and fish sticks and tacos. The exception is fruit; she loves almost all fruits outside of the melon family. I almost always have to order curbside pickup in between grocery store visits, just so I can get more berries and tomatoes; we go through three to four pints of tomatoes in a two-week period, mainly because of her.

She is kind and creative and enthusiastic and affectionate. She is super supportive and encouraging. She is FULL of ideas. She is still occasionally cuddly – right up until she puts her feet on my legs and I have to be DONE with cuddling because ew. She is a chatterbox who loves to talk and ask questions and learn things.

She is absolutely wonderful. I cannot wait to see what seven has in store for us.

The Birthday Itself

Her birthday passed this year without my usual weekslong lead up of Birthday Anxiety. Well, there was SOME Birthday Anxiety, because this is me we’re talking about. But it was very mild. Lest we all rejoice that I am finally mellowing out, consider these relevant facts:

1. I have been spending SO MUCH time with Carla since March. So. Much. Time. We, like the rest of the known universe, have transitioned from enjoying plenty of time together during Not School to enjoying plenty of time together during Not Camp. Because we have no local relatives and because we are still Staying At Home as much as is humanly possible (read: almost all hours of every day) and because my husband is now back to working in the office most days at an almost regular schedule, this means that we are alone together for approximately ten hours every day. It has been wonderful and challenging. And I am missing NOTHING of her life, which is such a blessing. The result was that I experienced almost none of that Childhood Is Fleeting panic in the weeks leading up to her birthday. I am getting a front row, minute-by-minute experience of her life. And while there are many things about our collective present situation I would change, I would not change that.
2. There was no birthday party to plan for! Well. We did have, at Carla’s request, a Zoom birthday party with all of her grandparents, aunts, uncle, and cousin). But I waited until the absolute last minute to plan that and it was relatively easy: Carla opened presents, said an enthusiastic thank you after each gift reveal, blew out the candles on her cake, and the party was OVER. Easiest party ever.

I admit that I did go a little overboard with the presents – and with overthinking the presents, and worrying that she wasn’t getting enough presents, and fretting over whether her birthday would be special enough. (At one point, I was wondering if I could pull off a Chalk Party, where her friends would come by in the now-familiar parade format and leave a chalk message on the driveway. I was researching individual boxes of chalk we could give out as a favors and trying to figure out how I could time it so that there was plenty of social distancing but not too much waiting in your car. Fortunately for all of us, Carla did not want so much attention.) You know, all the things that someone with no real worries can turn her mind to. But I think we hit exactly the right notes with everything: we had the party and the family presents to look forward to on the day before her birthday, and a special taco dinner. And then on her actual birthday, she got to open presents from me and her father, plus she had pancakes for EVERY SINGLE MEAL, plus she got to start (virtual) Story Pirates camp, PLUS, during camp and completely unplanned, she got to talk to one of the actual Story Pirates (Lee) and ask him a question which was like meeting a celebrity and made the entire camp worth the cost.

The Birthday Cake

Anyway: cake. In the months leading up to her party, Carla went back and forth about what kind of cake she wanted. For a very long time, she wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. At first, she wanted a tiger theme, and I was fretting over how to add tiger stripes to chocolate cake batter and chocolate frosting. But then she decided she wanted a flower theme, and the chocolate frosting would be the dirt out of which would bloom flowers made of icing. Then, she decided she wanted LEMON cake, but with chocolate frosting. I have never had that combination, but I found a recipe online and was all set to make it for her when she decided, at the last minute, that she wanted lemon cake with cream cheese buttercream frosting. Still with the flower theme, although I kept having to temper her expectations for what the flowers would look like.

I made this lemon cake with lemon cream cheese buttercream frosting. I also made my own lemon curd, which I put between the layers instead of buttercream; I thought it would benefit from a little extra tartness, to keep it from being too sweet.

I researched a variety of ways to create buttercream flowers. Yes, I know I could do them with piping tips. But I also know that I do not have a great track record of success with buttercream flowers. So I wanted to do something else. I discovered two really cool options – the first is the carved buttercream or scratch art technique, but my husband kindly and gently suggested that it might be a more advanced technique than I might want to experiment with on so fraught an occasion. So I went with the painted buttercream technique, hoping to evoke more impressions of flowers than actual flowers.

The Cake Results

The lemon curd turned out great, but I did not use enough of it. I think I could have done a thin layer of buttercream AND a thicker layer of lemon curd in between each layer. Oh well.

Worst, I overmixed the cake. One of the very clear directions in the recipe is to mix the ingredients until just combined. And as I was mixing them together, I kept fretting: you’re overmixing! you’re overmixing! But it turns out that I have no idea what “just combined” means. And so I did indeed overmix the batter and it turned out to be kind of heavy and dense. Oh well. It still tasted pretty good. I just do not know how to make the light and fluffy cake of my mind’s eye (my mind’s taste? my tongue’s dream?).

The painted buttercream technique went fine, I think. The end product looked more clumsy than impressionistic, but whatever. I am an AMATEUR baker. Carla seemed to like it, so that’s all that matters.

See? I really AM mellowing with age and quarantine.