Happy Frozen Cheese Pizza

On Monday my little Peanut will, impossibly, be turning 5. I don't know where the time went, but I can tell it's gone, because at the end of her fourth year she's suddenly sporting a new pair of longer legs and less-chubby cheeks that show off her cheekbones. She looks five, which does nothing to make it easier for me to swallow.

I have a party planned for her, set up as she requested: just a few friends here at the house. Peanut is nothing if not easy to please. I mean, she's the most stubborn human being I've ever met, which is saying a lot since previously I was the most stubborn human being I'd ever met, but that's only about 1% of the time. The rest of life, she goes easy on.

So the following weekend we're having family, about 8 kids, and cupcakes to celebrate this milestone. That's all she wants, and that's fine by me. But I keep asking what she wants to do on Monday after school, since that's her actual birthday: go somewhere fun, have a friend over, go out to dinner? And she's decided: she wants a frozen cheese pizza, here at the house, with me and her sister. That's it? That's it.

Every day I come up with a few more ideas, tantalizing little notions sure to entice her into imagining a more interesting birthday. Nope. Frozen cheese pizza, play time with her sister, and maybe a story or two before bed.

I love having an easy-to-please child, I really do. And I don't want her to feel wrong for wanting to keep it simple. I'm trying to recognize that while this milestone feels huge for me (She's in kindergarten now! She's reading! She's doing math! She has these ridiculous legs! The baby fat is all gone!), and worth celebrating in some spectacular fashion, maybe she's got enough newness going on in her life that the same old same old sounds perfect: a little familiar comfort to ring in her fifth year. Okay. Fine. I get it. But I'm still getting cake. And balloons. She'll just have to deal.