I don’t think that ever a birthday was as greatly anticipated as Emma Vance’s sixth. Seriously, she’s been talking about it for MONTHS. The girls had their joint birthday party last week, which is the grand hurrah for both of my little’s birthday celebrations, but on the actual day each child gets to choose something special to do or to eat. (And of course they get to ask for one special gift, too.) I swear the last child hadn’t yet left the girls’ joint party when E.V. started strategizing for her real birthday. (My first born gets an A+ in enthusiasm for sure.)
Just like last year, E.V. wanted to have her friends swim + eat zebra cake (which is just stacked ice cream sandwiches glued together with whipped cream). We invited our friends over for E.V.’s dream pool non-party, and spent the morning hunting down her special gift — a guitar!
Recently we moved E.V.’s desk from our downstairs to her room (because she wanted more privacy #teenager), and when I was cleaning up a few weeks ago, I found pages and pages of LYRICS in her desk. I’m not going to lie, my heart about burst from chest with emotion. (Mostly her little “songs” are about the sun, rainbows, love and playing with friends.) When I asked her about the little scribbled pages, each one had its own melody — like she actually wrote songs. And then, amongst one million other things (including a “robot cat” that she “made up in her imagination”), she asked for a “rock and roll guitar” for her special gift. How could we not get on board with that? I did tell her that she had to learn how to play an acoustic guitar first, which she happily agreed to.
Since Ryan is very musical, I knew he’d burst with pride when she told him her request, so I sent her immediately to let him know. Unfortunately (and hilariously), she can’t pronounce “acoustic,” so she confidently declared to him, “I want a brownstick guitar for my birthday!” He was confused; I couldn’t stop laughing; Emma Vance stood her ground. And, by the way, she still thinks “brownstick” is correct, so no one tell her any differently!
So little E.V. got her first guitar on her sixth birthday. And then her small group friends all swam at the neighborhood pool until the thunder was undeniable and the rain poured down. And then we all ran around like madmen at our house, a dozen kids and a dozen adults, eating pizza and kid-made zebra cake (which was so frozen that Mr. Joe had to use an electric knife to cut slices). And Emma Vance went to bed the happiest kid of all time. The End.
