Margaret's Birthday

I realize that there is a distressing similarity of posts coming out recently, but the problem is not me so much as the fact that all that the girls are doing is having birthdays.  We try to make things more interesting, but there's really no hope for it; they just keep having cake and presents and refuse to do anything else.

I'm sure that this is someone else's fault.  I'm not sure whose, but I'll get back to you on that.

Anyway, on Tuesday it was Margaret's turn.  We invited her grandparents over for dinner, and I cooked what she asked for.  I particularly liked that she requested salad, not because she would ever consider eating salad, but because she wanted to toss the salad.

And then we got to the cake.  I was realizing that my children are very lucky in that I make them cakes (I had this thought as I was melting the chocolate to make icing for Margaret's cake) from real ingredients.  Then I realized that since I almost always make them cakes from real ingredients, they have no idea how lucky they are.  It's a lowering thought.

Anyway. Margaret liked the cake.

She worked very hard at blowing out the candles, and finally made it with an assist from her Dad.  She was very proud of herself, and insisted that it still worked for wishing.  I did not argue.

She ate her cake, and played with her presents, one of which was a globe.  The globe was very exciting to her.  The globe was also very exciting to Ellie, who was most put out that she didn't have a globe.  Margaret tried to tell her all about it, but it wasn't as successful as one might have hoped.  We heard Margaret yelling aggrievedly from the other room "Ellie won't let me share my knowledge!"  So she shared her knowledge with Leo.

Margaret also got an atlas, and Ellie told us things about that.

And then they went to bed, with Ellie sobbing quietly to herself that she needed a globe so that she could know where things were in her world.  It was very sad.