a Frozen birthday.

Instead of a card, Willow did a watercolour with my water colour pencils. It started off as a tree, and then became a sparkling river she saw with poh poh and pa pa.

I don't know why this flipped. Urgh. Willow's writting is coming along very well. She copies more, and need me reading out the letters a lot less. She's also more willing to write, at times. While writing this, she kept shushing me so she could concentrate on copying down the letters I had written. She still doesn't quite get spacing, or why letters have to go in a certain order, but she's getting there :) On literacy- Willow's friend Amber is sleeping over tonight, and read her a book as a bedtime story. (One that one of my aunts made for Willow- Willow went for a walk. It's one of Willow's favourite books, and one of the easiest to read in her bookcase. I think having Amber, who is close to her in age, actually read her a book was a bit of a revolution for Willow- like oh, look at what is possible for ME to one day do. A lot of their games now involve Amber teaching Willow stuff she's learnt at school- mostly just sounding out letters, and thinking about how words sound. In the car on the way home, they were playing I Spy. Normally it runs on colours- "I spy with my little eye something that is... blue." "The sky?" "Yep." However, Amber started playing it based on the sound of the first letter- "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with... ka-." "Cows?" "Nope." "Cars?" "Yes!"

Anyways. Willow got invited to her first Frozen themed party. She's saved up $35 for an Elsa dress, but you can't get one for love or money. We have one rainchecked, so in a few more weeks she can have the satisfaction of walking up to the counter with her little money tin, handing over $35 in coins, and walking out with the dress of her dreams. In the meantime, I made her a cape out of some old lace curtain that came with the house, and I spent an hour and half covering it in glitter.  I also made her and Billie, the birthday girl, similar necklaces. Willow helped to make some of the beads, but I also made beads to spell Billie, and some to spell Willow. The girls were thrilled, and Billie put her necklace on right away. The rest of her outfit she already owned, and she was actually pretty content with that. She didn't seem upset or envious of the other girls dresses, even though one was in the exact dress Willow had saved up for... and she had long blonde hair in a side plait "Elsa style," and Willow really wants long blonde hair she can wear in a side plait. Like, even before Frozen came out, Willow would have moments of crying that her hair wasn't straight and blonde and long. 

They played outside, they played inside, they ate the junk food and ignored everything healthy, they played Freeze and "Pin the carrot on Olof." They jumped on the jumping castle until it sprung a hole, and played in the cubby house. Willow was just so happy to see her best friend from preschool, Xander, there. 

She won a prize for "Pin the Carrot on Olof," and then she won at Freeze... mostly because she was more interested in watching the video clip than dancing to it. She won glow in the dark loom bands and a cherry ripe bar. One of Willow's friends from preschool got out, and was devastated and kept crying, so on her own initiative, Willow went over, rubbed her back, then gave her half her prize- a cherry ripe chocolate bar.  The friend was more interested in the loom bands, but Willow wasn't going to share those. I felt really proud of Willow for her show of empathy and kindness. With the cold weather, we've been playing a lot more board games. I don't try to win, but I don't try to loose either. I mean, I can't help it if I roll a six three goes in a row, can I? Sometimes Willow gets really frustrated with Not Winning so I always tell her: It's never nice to brag, because you can hurt your friend's feelings; Winning is simply down to luck- you might win now, but you might lose later. Be the sort of winner you don't mind losing to; and you can't have a game without someone losing.

Plus, I try to teach her to not be a jerk in general anyway. But at 4, children are so open hearted in their affections, and their world is simple- I have some pretty good starting material. :)

They also got into the make up, because of course they did. There were boys at the party, but none of them were in this little circle. Funny that. Willow was, naturally, in the thick of it all. In fact, she was the one busted for opening up the nail polishes... which were quickly confiscated. You can also tell at one point, there was a silver door streamer decoration thing that they kids got into and tore apart. 

I love this photo of her holding the mirror up for Billie. They were chatting away about how to put it on, and where. 

You know what's really sad? My enthusiasm for that wall colour. It doesn't show up so well in these photos, but it's beautiful. A mushroom sort of gray. Looks beautiful with the wooden floorboards, AND looks good with the carpet (we had planned a similar colour for our rooms). It also looks good in natural light and artificial lights, and looked very smart with the white trim. Two weeks in to our new house, and I'm struggling with paint colours. The walls are a mix of terracotta red suede, cream and pink, while the trim is a mix of cream, pink and badly damaged. We're super determined to paint over the walls in the next few weeks, but I'm not having much luck with finding the paint colour that I want- I want something that can look warm AND cool AND is a neutral, but I'm over grays, and whites are devoid of personality. I go to the hardware store, I look at the infinite range of colour swatches, I grab about a million, I blu tack them to our wall, and then I find myself wondering what I was thinking, since they all seem wrong- too pink, too yellow, too saturated, too bland, too cold. But that mushroom gray? Perfect. Sadly, my friends were renting, so they had no idea what colour the walls were... so back to the swatches we go...