Five!

The last birthday of the year. Phew. Birthday season starts in July with Laine, then we have two birthdays in September and two in October, right before the start of all things holiday season. It’s exhausting. But Maive! Number five is now FIVE. How did this happen?! I remember seeing a Reddit post with a picture of a mother and her fifth kid, a daughter, on her wedding day. The dad posted the picture and said that their fifth kid cured his wife. Something to that effect. I knew exactly what that meant. There’s something about Maive. All the kids, they’re all amazing. But having a bonus baby and already being incredibly experienced in parenthood, it’s like Maive was a cure for the motherhood phase of life. I’m not wording this well but I totally got that father’s post.

Maive is the best five-year-old, of course. This kid slipped right into our family on day one. Leaving the hospital, she went straight to preschool pickup, Target, and gymnastics. All before coming home for her first time only to get all the siblings ready for trick-or-treating. Those first few days established her role in the family. The cute kid who happily goes along with whatever. And to this day, she’s still very much like this. She’s such a great little gal. She’s smart, funny, adorable, and all the other adjectives that describe a near-perfect kiddo. Basically, a perfect mix of all her siblings with a dash of Maive.

Birthday!

We celebrated Maive’s actual birthday at home, like we always do. Dinner of the birthday gal’s choice, followed by cake and presents. Before all of that, her birthday was on a Wednesday and she had outdoor school. She was so excited to take cupcakes to her classmates. And the day before, we took cupcakes to her Tuesday/Thursday classmates, and to her gymnastics team. She was all in on celebrating.

At home it was low-key. The new five-year-old was quite happy to finally have her birthday. All the siblings have birthdays leading up to hers and it’s really hard to wait when you’re a young one. Nothing much to report. We celebrated and called it a night.

Maive is five!

Party!

Maive decided to have her party at Chuck E. Cheese. Baby had her party there two years ago and I think Maive remembered. Because of our schedule, we had to push her party to a Sunday Afternoon in early November. It worked well. Saige and Baby had math, and then we went to party before Brian had hockey Sunday evening. We like to pack our schedule even though I really don’t want to.

We only invited a few families and kept it small. If we invited all of her school and activity friends, we’d have way too many people. We still had a good 15 kids I think, with ours included. The nice thing about having parties at places is they pretty much do it all. The kids all arrived and took off with their cards to play unlimited games. After game time ends, they call the kids over for pizza and then the Chuck E. Cheese celebration. A teenager comes out in the mouse costume and does the song and dance for all the birthday kids. Baby’s party had an enthusiastic Chuck; Maive’s Chuck didn’t want to be there. Haha. Oh well, the kids didn’t notice. Next is cupcakes followed by setting the kids free for a bit more game play. During this time, the birthday kid gets to go in the ticket tornado thing. Our party host was great, she picked up several tickets off the bottom when the tornado ended and handed them to Maive.

The party wrapped up after everyone selected their items with their tickets. We had to get moving to get home for Brian to make it to hockey on time. We managed. It was a busy day and a successful party.