Another Girl!

Can you even believe this cute face is five years old? And she is SO happy to be five. In the few days leading up to her birthday she would just burst out, "I can't believe I'm almost FIVE!" many times a day. And now that she is five, it seems to be everything she hoped it would be.

Her birthday was very fun. We'd been planning a special surprise for her for about three years... a kitten in a pumpkin! Every year on her birthday since she turned 2 we've thought "is this the right year?" and always the answer has been no, until this year. And oddly enough, just a couple of days before her birthday (when we'd already lined up the kitten) she started saying "I hope I get a kitten for my birthday" and trying to convince Greta to get her one. Specifically, a tiny calico. Well. That's just exactly what she got.

When Anja came into the room, she first thought the moving creature in there was a spider! But she eventually realized it was a kitten, and the kitten was immediately named Mary. And so, we have another little girl in our family. Mary, the calico kitten. The tiniest, sweetest, friskiest, most dog-like kitten ever, who likes to wiggle up into the dresser drawers from underneath, through the little gaps at the back of the drawers, and sleep on Martin's tshirts. She is not a bit shy, and she has been the perfect Birthday Cat.

Anja received a few special packages in the mail; one was from Auntie Perkalator, who sent this fox card, which Anja really loved. 

We had her family party this past Sunday. She asked for a strawberry cake, so I made one of those weird jello poke cakes, but I used too much jello and it was kind of gross. I also opted for homemade whipped cream (thanks, Martin!) instead of Cool Whip, because I'm an idiot like that. The theme of the party was PRINCESS. It was a very nice day and it looks like Anja's princess dress has replaced her fox costume for the time being, as her everyday uniform.

Here's more KITTEN:

I knit up this bowl to be our Thankfulness Bowl on our kitchen table. It's kind of cheesy, I know, but I feel that it's important to teach the girls about being thankful for even the smallest little things. Like markers, which is what Greta wrote on her card. And of course, Anja is thankful for.... being 5. But I'm sure we are all equally thankful that Mary has joined our family.

She's really SO tiny. (And while you might think the above picture is taken during an enormous roar, she actually can't make a noise any bigger than a tiny squeak, no matter how wide her mouth opens.)

So, yes, it was a good birthday. And I feel now that the Holiday season has begun. Making Thanksgiving plans, getting secret packages in the mail full of Christmas presents, guessing our anniversary gifts for each other, etc. This Christmas we'll celebrate 6 years, the traditional gift for which is "iron." When Martin told me that, I said, "you can get me a dutch oven!" and he said "thanks a lot." Then I worked really hard to sneakily get him into the local blacksmith guild but I had to tell him about it early. That's all I said--"I have your gift, but I have to give it to you early"--and he guessed it RIGHT AWAY. How did he do that?!? Anyway... in the end, it didn't even matter because the first meeting was this past Saturday, but Martin wasn't able to go after all because he'd spent the entire night before in the emergency room with Greta, with a terrible case of croup. It's always a little scary when they wake up coughing like that, but this time it was really frightening and very sudden--she doesn't even have a cold! I thought she was having some kind of allergic reaction to something and we couldn't get her calmed down so we rushed her off. Evidently they almost admitted her... luckily, she got calmed down and the breathing treatment did it's job. We've got a prescription through a few more nights, so hopefully we'll have no repeats of this! And Martin said the nurse was SO nice and that Greta was her old charming self by the end of the night.

Needless to say, our Saturday was pretty quiet.

And here are my girls:

 Elka is 5 months old this week!