Lola’s Six!

Lola! Our beautiful, talented, spunky girl is SIX! Lola is a girly-girl. She’s a ball of pink, glitter, sparkles and sequins. Lola always wants to wear something pretty (not BORING!), she prefers heels and dress-up, and always, ALWAYS, has a baby with her. She’s caring and empathetic, loves to snuggle and prefers to be home than out and about. That said — she’s busy and enjoys it! She’s our little tumbling loving cheerleader, dancer and gymnast. She’s a new Girl Scout (who is selling cookies!), she plays basketball once a week, is a social butterfly, and comes home with an entire play by play of everything that happened to her when she was away from home — whether she was at school or sports! Lola loves music and art and is always onto the next thing! At home, she’s a whirlwind. We know where she’s been because she leaves little clues all around the house — blankets, nail polish, Barbie clothes, a headband, a baby bottle. 🙂 Lola is always willing to try something new. She is motivated and tries, tries and tries again when she is learning something! She works so hard and gives her best effort in everything she does.

Lola has been (impatiently!) waiting for her birthday ALL YEAR LONG. Literally, she has been asking about her birthday since February. During every other family member’s celebration she would ask when is my birthday?! So, this week — when it finally came, she was over the moon!

This year, we decided we weren’t doing large parties for birthdays. In 2022, they each had a party and they cost us over $500 a kid! — plus the gifts and the cake. So, instead we were going to plan a trip to Disney World (more to come on that… hopefully we will continue to save up because it is SO expensive!) The kids liked the idea of that and then (obviously) as each individual birthday came, they were slightly disappointed which made me question the decision but I do still think it was a good one!

As her birthday got closer, I started to really feel guilty! Her birthday is the tricky one being right after Christmas and right before New Years and everything is so busy but lazy at the same time…and cold, too cold for me! So on the 26th, I woke up early and got to work — collecting, gathering and purging all of our Christmas stuff and putting it all back in storage. When I was done, I decided to kick off her birthday a day early and took the three kids to a trampoline park. She really loves those so it felt like a nice treat.

When I asked her what she wanted to do on her actual birthday (the 27th) she said “stay home the whole day and play with my toys”. So that’s exactly what she did! She woke up really early (of course) and opened her presents from us (practically in the dark) — we gifted her a baby doll, a magic mixie genie lamp, some doll clothes, a book, a sweatshirt, and a new toy.

She chose the games and play, plans and even asked for a photo shoot with her baby dolls. (Yes, my entire camera roll is filled with photos of dolls at the moment!)

She also made a plan for all her meals (pancakes for breakfast, pizza and salad for lunch, and burgers for dinner) and then asked for a brownie ice cream sundae bar for dessert. She wanted an “Elsa” celebration — not to be confused with Frozen because she didn’t want Anna on the plates! Just Elsa! At dinner, she had us watch Frozen in the living room, listen to the soundtrack in the kitchen and dining room, and she dressed up like Elsa.

After dinner, my parents and aunt came over to join us for the ice cream sundae bar and to sing happy birthday! Funny — she didn’t eat any brownies, whipped cream, hot fudge or sprinkles. So basically, she just wanted ice cream. She opened a few more presents from them and that was six. It was low-key but exactly what she wanted to do!

Plus, her celebrations didn’t end there! The next day, she went to my parent’s house and was given two (full!) doll wardrobes and two baby dolls! And then the following day, she went to Target with Barb to pick out her very own present (surprise: another baby doll!) — she’s been having the time of her life this week!