Libby is Four!

Well, Libby, after much anticipation and some completely understandable confusion what with a preschool birthday celebration at the end of May, a family celebration on Memorial Day weekend, and a friends celebration two days ago, today you are actually four years old!

All you wanted this year was a tea party for your birthday, and I had decided that this was the year I would farm out your party.  There were two cute little tea shops in our area, either of which would have been a perfect venue for tea for you and a few little friends.  We would walk in the door, everything would be set up, we would have a delightful tea and open a few presents, and we would leave.  I wouldn't so much as wash a single dish.  However, I discovered that both establishments had gone out of business right in the months before your birthday.  Naturellement.  And you were dead set on having that tea party.  Mais bien sur. So it was on to Plan B...a tea party at home.

And I have to say, I had a ball planning it for you!  We decorated hats, wore fancy gloves, put on "lipstick" (chapstick, but whatever) and jewelry, ate fancy sandwiches, and had a good time.  You and your little friends were such lovely little ladies.  It was all. so. girly. {swoon}

Party favors

Annual "waiting for the party guests" shot

Decorating fancy hats

All the sophisticated ladies going to tea

The birthday girl

I forgot. There was one other thing you wanted demanded for your birthday.

You may not realize it now, but one day you will know my feelings about gift wrapping (it's akin to a religious experience) and items featuring licensed characters (they should all be burned). So when we were out shopping one day last week, you glommed onto this awful, cheesy Barbie (I don't even think it's real Barbie -- more like a Barbie knockoff!) wrapping paper. You were enamored of it and begged me to wrap your presents in it. It was the wrapping paper of a four-year-old's dreams. Honestly, it was exactly what I would have wanted my mom to wrap my presents in when I was four. (My mom would have refused. With good reason.) I tried diplomatically to talk you out of it, but you were resolute. And, thus, THIS:

Hideous

Proof of my great, great love for our Barbie-loving, tea-drinking, bow-wearing, roughhousing, Lego-building, big-slide-at-the-pool-riding, brother-following, Mario-Kart-playing, scooter-riding, Mommy-hugging, precious FOUR YEAR OLD Libby.