My baby

Yeah, so I've been really crap about posting and keeping up to date regarding my challenge.

BUT.

My baby girl. My little baby girl, my little rabbit, my littlest Smurflet... She turned 5 today and is now suddenly all grown up.

I'm absolutely not getting broody for another baby, I swear.

But still. My baby. Is 5. I've even been bumped up to the "Big Kid newsletter" from Baby Center.

I think we celebrated L's 5th birthday pretty well. Yeah, OK, Sunday was the only day it has rained (poured even!) in the last 2 weeks, so our plans to have fun at a nice park we know went (quite literally) down the (flood) drains.

Which meant a MAJOR tidy up at our place (haven't seen the place look this good since before we moved in 3 years ago!).

But in other ways it was quite practical having to do the party at home - no transportation problems (still don't have a car and the person who offered to help out had to pull out the day before because her little girl was too ill to come to the party), easier to coordinate, etc.

There were 16 kids in total (11 girls, 5 boys), and, compared to C's wild 7th birthday party in January (with only 9 girls), this one was a breeze. The kids were well behaved, seemed to have a lot of fun yet remained reasonably calm and collected, they nearly all ate their cake, those that asked for strawberries ate them very nicely, there was very little crying, no major accidents... IT WAS A GOOD PARTY!

And L got given such beautiful presents! She's such a lucky little girl, she really is!

Then, today (her actual birthday), she got a small present from us this morning, then, for the first time ever, we picked her and C up from school at 11.45 along with 2 friends (one for each, but sisters) who couldn't come yesterday and had a little lunch party, with L's favourite food (roast chicken, sauté potatoes, green beans, then strawberries). Back at school in the afternoon, there was cake and juice and candles and singing, and then, finally, after school, we came home, opened her presents from us (she LOVES her Tinkerbell computer!), C, Papy, my dear friend M and my cousins, had a nice dinner and yet another cake with candles.

And as the weather was fabulous (of course), she even got to wear her beloved pretty dress.

I'm waaaay behind with my work (not only have I had multiple birthday preparations to take care of, but I'm also up to my eyeballs in the school newspaper and have just got myself involved in the organisation team for the school end of year fête) and haven't done much about my Challenge (but, alternatively, haven't had much time to break it either, as a result, unless you count a much-needed Egg McMuffin on Saturday morning).

However, I haven't abandoned it altogether, especially as today is exactly 3 weeks till my birthday.

So.

Day 16: I'm going to get some nice pictures (we have quite a few) up on the walls at last.
Day 17: I also want to try and get the girls' room decorated once and for all - though almost certainly not before my birthday, this will probably have to be during the summer.
Day 18: I want to try and read some less trashy books, less gory books.
Day 19: I want to get all the remaining kit furniture put together and put to use...
Day 20: ...Following on from Day 19, I want to sort out the CD collection for the "new" CD shelf so we can actually find stuff at last.

Now, it's 12.36 am, my head is aching, I feel strangely sick (possibly overdosed in sweetness from the 5 cakes I've made since Saturday night, even though I've actually eaten very little of it) and I'm aching to go to bed for a week. But there's not much chance of that: have a text to finish tonight, have to prepare the girls' stuff for tomorrow, have to take them to school tomorrow and then spend most of the day printing, folding, assembling and delivering the school newspaper an then most of the evening working like a slave.

Oh, and my tax forms still aren't done and sent out because the extranet link doesn't work.

Could I be any more tired? Really, could I?