Monday, September 13, 2010
Happy 6th Birthday Miriam!
Today was my oldest child's birthday, Miriam turned 6 years old today at 7:23 pm! It was a fun, exciting yet somewhat heartbreaking day for me. It was the day we said goodbye to the "T's", the day my little girl is officially no longer a toddler. She is now a perfect and beautiful "young girl". How did my baby get to be 6 years old? Everything we have been through with her has made life go by so quickly we barely had a chance to blink twice. I guess I should rejoice in the fact life is moving by so quickly, perhaps that means life is not actually so bad for us. Which honestly despite our set backs and challenges as a family with a blind child life is actually pretty good. I love my life and I adore my family it is just hard seeing that "6" on the birthday card. (BTW: Thank you Olga, we love you so much for always thinking of and showing love to our babies on their birthdays :)
But I AM very happy and most importantly according to Miriam herself she is happy. I was so proud to hear her say this as she was sitting eating her 4 favorite foods at dinner when I mentioned to Tom that it looked liked she was enjoying the meal. She said in a sweet conversational certain voice "I AM happy" then continued on her merry way scarfing down her pinto beans with jowl, green beans, corn bread and french fries. And yes this odd combination is in fact all of my daughters favorite foods! I relate the beans to the fact we were very low income when I was pregnant and we ate tons of beans, so many in fact that I refused to eat them for years until I discovered the lovely flavor jowl added to a pot of southern made beans! The first time she ate a bowl of beans was the first time she ate a whole meal without having a meltdown.
After dinner we set up the swimming pool in the garage (it was about to storm) so the girls could enjoy a good swim and burn off dinner to make room for the cake festival of sweets awaiting them. 
After swimming we had to do things backwards which meant presents first. Miriam gets REALLY messy with her cake eating and since it was near bedtime we did not want to have to change into new clothes. This was the first year Miriam actually showed interest in unwrapping her own presents. I decorated with paper and a variety of textured fabric, she especially loved the black velvet. It was also the first year she actually explored her presents!
As you can tell we are a Geranimals household. Almost all of their toys are centered on some sort of sensory stimulation and we love them. Their foam blocks are textured, the "Monkey" in the box has 4 different textured sides as well as music, and Geranimals activity box is filled to the brim with all sorts of stimulating activities. The other toy in the picture is the "Krinkles" Learn and play school, another perfect toy for the blind. The Disney doll you see actually sings "A dream is a wish your heart makes."
Now normally I would be baking and decorating away all day long making my girls the cake of their dreams but the past few years every cake I slaved over made one or all of my kiddos sick. It seems they have an allergy to cake dye so now we have to go simple. This means no more pretty colorful cakes made by mommy! I know I could have gone simple all on my own but I am NOT a simple girl when it comes to baking. I feel almost as if I am cheating not going nuts on the cake decorating so instead we just went out and bought a cake. I figured with homeschooling this year and my limited amount of time the cake could take the direction of "buy it now" with no need for forgiveness. I also know some of you are thinking to yourself, does it really matter if a blind kid has a "pretty" cake to which I have to say "YES, yes it does!". I am a firm believer that if something that should be pretty is not pretty it will show in the flavor. It is all about the love, the more love, the better it tastes and my baby can definitely feel the love! lol
Anywho, ;-) We got her the cake of her dreams a white, butter-cream filled cake with a mountain of chocolate fudge lava on top. 
She had asked for an ice cream cake but we had to hunt late and the stores were out of ice cream cakes by the time I went shopping. So this was my choice and along with rocky road ice cream, Klondike bars and Hershey chocolate there was no need for some crummy old ice cream cake. 
As you can see from the cake pictures all of the girls has an insanely good time and the cake/ice cream extravaganza was a major hit. It was a nightmare to clean up but well worth every minute!
Happy Birthday my Miriam Monkey!
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Oh what a fun birthday! She looks so happy. I have to ask what exactly is Jowl??? I don't like beans but would like to try it w/ Jowl if it is really that good. :^)
ReplyDeleteIt REALLY is that good with Jowl. ;-) I add Jowl, green peppers, chicken broth, diced tomatoes, onion, garlic then salt/pepper to taste. It is so good!
ReplyDeleteJowl is the cheek of the pig. It tastes a lot like bacon except the flavor is so much better than bacon. You can usually find it near the bacon section. I throw it in whole , then when the jowl is cooked through I chop it up. It is a good substitute in most dishes that call for ham hocks as well. So much more flavor!