Two cakes and a birthday

Nine Years Old. Oh my!! My little girl is nine. Doesn't she look excited - and happy?!

It's not easy to pull the wool over Jemimah's eyes. She was really only a little dot when she realised that if she engineered things so as to celebrate her birthday in Melbourne on the weekend nearest to her birthday, she was likely to manage to have two cakes - one then and one on the actual day.

And so it was this year.

Two cakes. As usual.

There is nothing exciting about living in the ruins of our once peaceful home. Jemimah is still coming to terms with the loss of many of her possessions, and indeed of much of life as she knew it. She is not the only child to have difficulty sleeping, and behavioural issues are evident amongst many of her friends. No one can concentrate, and some are quite fearful.

Birthdays need celebrating when you're nine though, don't they, and even though we were not up to having a party and the whole shebang, everybody has gone out of their way to make Jemimah's ninth birthday extra special.

She started celebrating on Friday night with take-away from our favourite Thai Restaurant with the Princess Pea and her family. There were pressies, potato crisps, favourite Thai dishes and lots and lots of attention for the Birthday Girl. Things were off to a good start.

Princess Pea slept over on Friday night. That was pretty fun also, as was the ice-skating at Docklands the next day. Well, fun, and funny too, watching two tweens on ice for the very first time.

My mum - we call her Marga - excelled herself on Sunday with a wonderful Dolly Varden cake, as she had done for me at around the same age. (Apparently I wouldn't let anybody cut mine, and it was thrown away much the worse for wear several weeks later. Jemimah was not so foolish.) It was delicious, as well as being especially elegant. She was Dolly Varden, after all.

Have you seen my little girl? She doesn’t wear a bonnet.
She’s got a monstrous flip-flop hat with cherry ribbons on it.
She dresses in bed furniture just like a flower garden
A blowin’ and a growin’ and they call it Dolly Varden.

Alfred Lee 1872

Jemimah and her Princess girlfriends decorated her other cake. It was beautiful, as only a child-decorated cake can be. Totally OTT. Now this is how a cake should be - when you're nine, and dieting is still years and years away. Take a look at their creation. Oh my!! Totally beautiful, isn't it?

Last night we had a BBQ with family friends. The kids played, danced to ABBA, and decorated cakes. The adults discussed the flood. And insurance policies. And what to do about mould. As you do.

It was fun.

It was all about Jemimah. Which is right and proper, when you're nine, and it's your birthday.

This morning we cleaned up.

I miss my dishwasher.