Daisy Suzanne Allen

Born Sunday 6th March 2011

5th birthday

Her life:  4 to 4¼ years ♥ 4¼ to 4½ years ♥ 4½ to 4¾ years ♥ 4¾ to 5 years ♥ 5th birthday ♥ 5 to 5½ years ♥ 5½ to 6 years ♥ 6th birthday ♥ 6 to 6½ years ♥ 6½ to 7 years ♥ 7th birthday ♥ 7 to 7½ years ♥ 7½ to 8 years ♥ 8th birthday ♥ 8 to 8½ years ♥ 8½ to 9 years ♥ 9th birthday

In summary:  Index ♥ From birth to four years old ♥ Four years old to nine years old ♥ Nine years old onwards

Special features:  Golden Bear (reprise) ♥ More cookery

Daisy's birthday week began a full seven days before her birthday.  It had been hastily rearranged following Lynne being beaten to the punch in sending out invitations.  One of Daisy's friends had a birthday party scheduled for our original target date, the Saturday immediately before Daisy's birthday, which meant that we brought Daisy's party forward the weekend before.  The staff at Bizzy Kids café was happy to oblige - thankfully.  Lynne and Daisy went on ahead, as I parked up with Gregory, who is posing here.

This is a reasonable summary of what was to be expected at today's party.

As we were first to arrive, Daisy - all prettily dressed up in her party frock for the fairy (I think - or princess) theme - and Gregory commandeered the colouring table.

Face painting was offered and Daisy duly accepted.

Either Daisy had had somewhat of a shock or the Bizzy Kids person had painted her face white, and added a star.

This was the finished product - very fancy.

This table was a Gregory dream - vehicles, animals and construction blocks.

Here's the birthday girl in full fairy dress (the wings do suggest fairy rather than princess), posing for the camera.

I am not quite sure what is going on here at the felt wall.  They are definitely wings that Daisy is wearing.  I don't think anyone else got the memo, though.

One of Daisy's schoolmates also had the triple flower face painting done so they posed like flower twins.

After some free play, the table was set up for fairy (see!) cake making.

Before the cake making began, though, Gregory still had time to get in some train action.

And in fact others had chance to get stuck in with the array of toys on offer.

The local zoo had to be contacted - a tiger was on the loose and causing havoc.

Right, so the cake making has begun.  Gregory had his own place at the table but needed a bit of a hand with the fairy cake making.  His efforts largely consisted of eating the various sugary topping options.

The face painting is so good it takes you a little moment to realise that, no, she hasn't got her tongue stuck out.

Here were Daisy's concoctions - seemingly chasing a theme of 70s disco faces.

We then moved into the, er, dining room for lunch, which was a mixture of retro crisps (including Monster Munch, Wotsits and Frazzles - reminiscent of Richard Osman's World Cup Of Crisps), healthy veg dippers with hummus, a cocktail sausage hedgehog, sandwiches and pizza.  Many of the adults (mainly me) hovered around as the kids filtered slowly away, looking to grab some much-needed sustenance.

After lunch, they switched back to the cake-making table, which had been decorated as you can see, in readiness for the birthday cake coming out.  And here you can see it.

After the food, the games and, specifically, Pass The Parcel.  Most children ended up getting some sort of sugary treat.

And then they played musical statues.  There were some very strong performances - it was difficult to pick the child eliminated each round.  In fact, it was difficult for another reason when it came to Daisy as she had a bit of sulk when she was picked.  I think she felt that she wasn't moving, but also she doesn't take losing too well.

The organisers sort of hedged their bets by giving the last few left in some sweets, but they still awarded the victory to Charlie Roberts.  This was controversial for two reasons.  Firstly, he had missed several rounds due to, I think, a toilet trip.  Secondly, young Gregory, who had been quietly getting on with business, was never voted out, and so was technically still in.  However, what perhaps added to the slight confusion was that he stood partially in the line of those voted out when they tried to choose the next person, and they probably didn't notice him for that reason.  Plus, he wasn't in the slightest bit bothered about the situation since he had, at that age, no concept of winning or losing.  Just looking a bit cheeky and innocent, as this photo demonstrates.

A rabbit painted onto Daisy's other cheek seemed to have the effect of making Daisy very serious and pensive.

On arriving back home, it was time to open all the presents she had received.  These would be the first of many, of course.

We now move forward to the birthday weekend, the veritable crux of the birthday week.  By this point, Avis and Graham had been down for a couple of days, and on the Saturday evening we went to Frankie and Benny's for a pre-birthday birthday tea.  Daisy was delighted by, and delightfully covered in, her spaghetti in tomato sauce.  As you can see.

Graham looked on with detached amusement at Daisy's penchant for covering him relentless in stickers.  None of us were entirely immune.

Dessert saw a special treat of ice cream with lots of different add-ins, much to Daisy's impish delight.

Here is the dessert tray in all its glory.

The day itself finally arrived, after literally months of counting down (at one point in December she had proclaimed that she couldn't wait until it was January because it was "January then February then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is my birthday in March" or something like that - she made it sound a lot sooner than the 60-odd days it really was).  Heading downstairs in the morning, Daisy saw the usual semi-vast array of presents (don't worry, there would be more).

It was going to be a fun-packed day as, this year, Daisy's birthday coincided with Mothering Sunday and we had three mothers going to be present in our house.  First up, Avis supped her Mother's Day cuppa as she carried out some last minute preparation for her imminent trip to Florida (with Graham).  They both looked suitably pleased to be going.

Second up was resident mum, Lynne, whose fave and traditional Mother's Day breakfast was savoury French (eggy) toast with (very) crispy bacon.

After we had said goodbye to the Schofields (but not Lynne, obviously), we said hello to the Allens.  Uncle Matt was soon present to give artistic guidance.

Once everyone had arrived, comprising (in addition to Matt), Jonathan, Jordan, Aunty Katie and Nana Sue, the usual present opening carnage ensued.  Lynne was just happy she had acquired a wodge of cash, of which I'm sure a good proportion would end up in Daisy's bank account.

Princess Daisy was part-delighted, part-deranged by the quantity of pink and purple and presents on offer.  It was all clearly too much.

Meanwhile, Gregory had taken a fancy to some of Daisy's presents - in particular, her fancy low-heeled shoes.  He seemed pretty darned chuffed with himself, anyway.  One to watch.

The premise for the double-Mother's-Day-plus-birthday meal was that I had given each of the girls whose special day it was (sorry, Aunty Katie) a choice of main and dessert.  Lynne chose pizza, which I bought for simplicity at her (partial) request (I was actually going to buy the bases, make the tomato sauce and top them myself, but Tesco had no decent bases and so I was forced to buy margherita pizzas and top those myself instead), and fruit salad (based on the one that Matt made about 10 years previously, and one which I asked him to try to remember how to reconstruct).

Meanwhile, Daisy opted for macaroni cheese (although she somewhat reneged on her request mere minutes before it was served and didn't really have much of it) and (shop-bought) doughnuts.  That was her initial request, as I denied her the ability to change to lemon tart as it was too similar a combination to Christmas, promising to make it her a weekend or two later (which I did).  Finally, Nana Sue plumped for stuffed peppers (an old favourite of mine which was basically an upgrade of something random on the internet - the stuffing is a mixture of minced pork, rice, feta, chorizo and onion) and salted chocolate tart (Nigella-style - also one of my Christmas desserts, but Nana Sue picked first).  We also cracked open a bottle of champagne for a toast, as you do.

After the mains, Daisy was soon playing one of her new games, Magical Tea Time, with Aunty Katie, and posing slightly shyly with it.

Nana Sue was very pleased with her chocolate tart, which soon started disappearing despite (or perhaps because of) its richness.

And we'll finish Daisy's 5th birthday with an apparent regression, as Daisy hopped into the pram with Gregory seemingly eager to push it.

And that's that.  Our little girl is five years old.  Crazy times.

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