Today was Lydia’s 9th Birthday! Lydia has been an absolute dream child this year and often times I want to kind of pinch myself when I think of how she is blooming. She is kind, creative, intelligent and delightfully interested in learning new things. We have been practicing German together every morning on the way to school and she is such a great language buddy. She reads a ton, loves art, dolls, history, languages (especially German!) and her family. She is a great friend, a peaceful, cooperative student, and she’s incredibly, unbelievably honest. This is one trustworthy child, and we are so lucky to have her in the family. Also, she gives the best, most affectionate hugs before I drop her off at school. We love you, Lydia!
Okay, that said, Lydia was kind of a brat on her birthday. I think she’s stressed herself past the point of civility trying to reach her personal goal of reading five hours a day for her school competition, and maybe that’s maxed out her capacity for politeness. Also, when she is in brat-mode, I hear my own voice coming back at me from all of the times I have been at the end of my civility rope and snarled at her about innumerable silly things. So I spent the whole day in the presence of my shadow self emerging regularly from the mouth of my newly-nine-year-old daughter. That was an education. Whoooeey.
Even though Lydia and Abe were the only ones well, we dragged ourselves through Denver on a birthday death march, trying to keep the day appropriately festive to celebrate our beautiful daughter.
We started at the Denver Biscuit Company. I read Lydia the menu two days before and the idea of biscuits captured her imagination. They were really great but took FOREVER to come, so we just devoured them on sight instead of photographing them
After the biscuits, Abe bought me an immunity shot from a nearby juice store. It tasted like a cross between vomit and fire, but I loved it because it felt so powerful that I can’t imagine it didn’t do something good.
Then we drove to the Denver Children’s Museum and allowed the kids to play, play, play.
Here is a video of Clarissa trying to hold as many balls as possible. She also got into multiple scuffles with Ammon regarding ball possession and/or whose turn it was at the different stations. She was (mostly) good with the other kids.
Afterward we headed next door to the Denver Aquarium and had lunch with the mermaids. The mermaids swam up to them, made faces and blew them kisses. They were enchanted!
We did not realize it was daylight savings time until two days later, but for some reason we couldn’t understand at the time, everything seemed to happen really late. For example, we finished lunch around 3pm. Clarissa had not yet napped and was an absolute mess, so we drove to the American Girl Store while she slept. All of the kids except Lydia fell asleep, and when we got there Abe took a little nap in the car with them while I took Lydia inside to pick out her birthday present.
She picked out a Truly Me doll that has a similar coloration to Lydia and a matching dress. To be honest, I was kind of against the Truly Me dolls for many years because I like American Girl dolls for the ways they excite a love for history in children. But Lydia was so excited…so I got her the doll. And she named it Lydia Anne Darais Jr. Ammon is EXTREMELY into people’s names and made sure to address the doll as “Lydia Darais Junior” for the rest of the trip. He talked to her a lot.
After we got her doll and she played with it quietly in the car for a while, the kids woke up and it was time for dinner. It felt like we just ate lunch, but it was a good thing we drove straight to Casa Bonita because the lines to get into that restaurant are like the worst Disneyland lines imaginable. Mary was feverish and so sick that Abe had to carry her most of the way, occasionally setting her down to curl up in a ball on the floor. Clarissa and Ammon were literally climbing the walls of the line and Lydia was impatient to get inside and see everything we’d looked at online. Finally finally finally we made it inside and it was worth it! Lydia declared it the best restaurant on the face of the earth. It has cliff divers, dancing gorillas (people in gorilla costumes), pirate shows and cowboy fights. Also there were warm sopapillas with honey at the end. Lydia was very, very happy by that point.
After dinner we drove home and got everyone in pajamas. Then we watched A Dog’s Way Home as a family. We didn’t even know the film would be set in Denver, but it so appropriately was! And we all thought it was the most delightful film.
And that was the end of Lydia’s ninth birthday. Happy birthday, sweet girl! You are so loved. I hope you have lots of happy memories from this special, special day.