Six.

Yes, she is six.

(That's her giving Rose a "bath" at Build-A-Bear. Don't worry, there's no real water, just the sound of it and some brushes. And yes, she's supposed to do that before she dresses the bear, but in all the excitement over finally getting A GIRL we sort of forgot.)

(Oh, and what's that on her arm you say? It's a "temporary" tattoo she bought from the high school cheerleaders. TWO WEEKS AGO. It's still there, as is the other one on the other arm that's been there for THREE WEEKS. Yes, we bathe our child. And it's getting harder and harder to convince her, and ourselves, that these aren't the real deal. If I could scrub her arms as she slept at night, or rub alcohol on them, without waking her, by golly, I'd do it.)

Anna Marie woke up before her alarm this morning. I heard her stirring around, talking to herself, and went in.

"I can't believe I turn six today! I stayed up all night long (um, no, she didn't) and waited until the sky was blue outside so I would know I was six.

If you want to get technical about things, she wasn't born until 2:48 p.m. So, technically, she's not six. But who was I to tell her that?

She told me about a bazillion times this morning that she was going to get a Happy Birthday visor at school today.

And, can you believe, I baked these:



All by myself.

I know, the all-by-myself part isn't so surprising when you see them.

Yes, I could've gotten store bought cakes - and I like nothing more than a load of buttercream so sweet you can taste the sugar with your teeth. But I'm trying to set a better example. So these are made with Devil's food mix, and pumpkin and a half cup of water in lieu of the eggs and oil.

They are blow-your-head-off good.

For the frosting, I got the whipped kind - both because it had fewer calories than the other tubs, and because I figured it would be easier to stir in the food coloring.

I was going to buy the coloring and mix my own orange, and then on the Wilton aisle, I found actual orange gel coloring.

Brilliant.

It cost a bit more, but it also eliminated the pressure on me to get the red/yellow mixture just right.

And we know I'm all about less pressure.

I was trying to figure out how to frost the tiny morsels, when Jason breezed through the kitchen and said, "Why don't you put the frosting into a ziplock bag, and cut a tiny hole in the corner, and pipe it on?"

Again, brilliant.

He's been watching Alton Brown, you know.

I've never, ever baked cupcakes before, and I learned a couple of lessons (i.e., even if you have silicone bakeware, and you use no-stick spray, you still need cupcake liners, you cheap slacker.)

To keep the cupcakes from tumping over in transit, I cut strips of cardstock and put it between the rows. I still had a little tumpage this morning, but the cardstock helped mitigate the damage.

Anna Marie doesn't know that I'm coming to eat lunch with her today. And after school, she has a few presents to open - a scarf knitted by Aunt Manda, a "Dance Dance Revolution" mat from Gramma (which, by the way, I've been wanting for myself) and a Leap Frog cylindrical math-game-thingy from us.

Because we're all about the learnin'.

She also got Rose already, as well as a new fall wardrobe.

She's six now. Six years old.

And time is going way, way too fast.