Girl's Gone Child: Last Friday Night. And Saturday.

Hal's parents came out from New York last week and over the weekend we celebrated Fable's 5th with a bounce house and a princess and way too much pizza. I had been regretting the house party idea pretty much since we sent the evite because it's kind of a stressful thing having all of those people in your house, especially when you don't know them really at all. I made the mistake of saying these things out loud in front of Fable and then realized, "CHILL. This is happening and it's going to be rad."

Me: Oh, but the clean-up!

Myself: Every day there's a clean-up!

Me: Oh but the house gets thrashed and there's not even room and there's stuff everywhere and the windows are basically falling apart and there are spiderwebs everywhere and dust bunnies.

Myself: Look at your daughter's face, woman. She is thrilled.

Me: I'm going to shut up now.

The anticipation days are always the best. We set up a few days early, moved furniture out of the way and had epic dance parties in the rooms that suddenly had no corners to bonk heads on or couches to hog space...

Fable did most of the decorating herself, taping pictures on the walls, creating a playlist with her favorite songs. My father-in-law and I blew up balloons until we felt drunk from light-headedness. (Worth it, though. Balloons are so fun in rooms with no furniture. Like slow everything down as they float uppppppp an doooooooooowwwwn uppppppppp and dooooowwwwn, rolllllllllllll and uppppppp.)

My mother-in-law made Fable an amazing rainbow sweater and brought flower buttons so that Fable could arrange and sew them on herself.

The morning of her party, Fable was up at 6 am in a wedding dress and a crown her auntie Dani made for her clipped across her head, like, "WAKE UP. IT'S ALL HAPPENING."

Do you remember that feeling? My earliest memories are my birthday parties, not during them but before, as I sat on the stairs, kicking the wall, picking at my socks, waiting... Twisting my side-ponytail, turning up and then down the Phantom of the Opera CD which is pretty much all I listened to until I was introduced to Arrested Development and then I just listened to Mr. Wendal on repeat for, like, three years.

My mom made 48 cupcakes because she's amazing. We ordered pizza and made lemonade, salads for the parents, seven-layer dip, a bunch of carrots on a plate. Strawberries on a plate. Cucumbers on a plate. Pirates Booty on a... bowl.

And then, people arrived. And Aurora arrived. And everyone arrived. And minus a broken window and lemonade spills every sixteen seconds, all was well and awesome. The kids danced and bounced and colored (next time I'm just going to buy a bunch of paper and markers and let them draw pictures for three hours) and Sleeping Beauty rocked it out with the balloon animals and the freeze dance and the face painting...

We went to another birthday party on Sunday for one of Fable's classmates. (Everyone in her class has a birthday between October- December so there's pretty much a birthday party every weekend day) and I realized that even though destination parties are easier and less stressful and all of the things that one appreciates as a parent, there's something really special about a house party, broken windows and all.

"Did you have a good birthday?"

"I had a GREAT birthday."

"How does it feel to be five?"

"It feels AMAZING."

... And so goes the end of little lady birthday season.

I remember celebrating Fable's third birthday days after we brought Bo and Revi home from the hospital, feeling guilty about the girls' birthdays being so close. I mean, obviously Bo and Revi's were going to be close but for Fable, who is in a sense the middle child, having to share everything with two little sisters, including her birthday season, felt, I don't know... something.

Which is insane, I now realize and now I kind of love that their birthdays are all at once. It feels like this great big celebration of life. Like three giant waves all in a row and WHEEEEWWWW, what's up, life? We are celebrating the LADIES this month, what's up, ladies! IT'S GIRL PARTY TIME! And it is, it was, it has been.