Lily

My Lily turned six two days ago. I didn’t give her permission to grow older, she just went and did it anyway.

Sweet girls birthday was a bit of a non-event as far as birthday excitement goes. I guess despite our best planning, it was kind of hijacked after opening early morning presents on our bed by what I and others in the family had to do. We had to meet someone in the city in the morning to do wedding shopping (that’ll have to be another post!) - don’t think of the city as anything pleasant and leisurely, think of it as a jam-packed market where you have to hold onto your kids with one hand, and your bag and whatever you’ve bought tightly with your other, while people literally pull on you saying you need to buy their stuff. We were caught in a two hour jam trying to get back out. That was after the one hour it took to get in. We had another appointment at 2 in the afternoon, so managed to get a quick lunch in town on the way there. Home in time to make dinner and chocolate brownie for her cake – thankyou, thankyou, thankyou Lily for requesting such an easy cake and for the look of absolute joy on your face when you saw the results of the pitiful five minute decorating job! An episode of Little House on the Prairie and Lily was happy and satisfied – all the makings of a fun birthday apparently!

I’m often amazed at how the meaning of our kids names describe them so well. Lily’s no different, her name (Lily Grace) means ‘pure grace’, and for the first few years I think that was exactly what we needed as she constantly went above and beyond the crazy antics of her five older siblings. In fact, some days I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and I really wondered if she’d make it out of toddlerhood alive! No wonder I’ve got premature greys!

oops!

The last few years she has started to exude grace to an extent that sometimes astounds me. I really think everyone needs a Lily in their life – a child whose love knows no barriers – neither age, gender, ability or race, and whose smile and hugs quickly makes her friends with everyone she meets.

Bedtime on her birthday night came, and while I was feeling guilty that we hadn’t done much to make the day extra special, Lily gets into the new pyjamas she got for her birthday, comes into my room holding her old pyjama pants and matter of factly says “I’ve got two pairs of jammies now, so we can give this pair to someone who needs some”.

Oh sweet girl, how I love your heart.

And for those that read this post about Drews birthday, or this one about the previous three birthdays – I thought we were doing awesome when I went to bed at the end of the day and despite Charlotte having a headache and saying she’d been doing sick burps all day we’d had no-one vomit this birthday. Until 11:45pm. Bummer. I’m all for family traditions, but really???