A Little Noise

Feb. 26, 2007

Dear diary,

Today was my 3rd birthday. Daddy says I’m now old enough to have a ghost write my biography. I don’t really know what a ghost is, but if it’s anything like that guy in the scary mask last October, I want nothing to do with it.

We spent a long time getting ready for the party. I found out that sometimes you get your face painted, so I just had to try it out. Daddy laughed and said I didn’t quite get the concept. I think I’m quite the artist, and cleverly circumvented the ‘no nose ring’ rule.

Yesterday was Sunday. Daddy doesn’t go to work; we go to church to see Satya and Hannah. Mommy dressed me in a pretty green dress with flowers, and I got to wear a tiara in my hair. Everybody at church talked about the beautiful princess.

We got pizza after church, and I made sure to drop some marinara on my dress. Eden sniffed and called me an amateur.

Eden and I had to take a nap when we got home, but Mommy and Daddy must have been hard at work, because when I got up, Hannah and Satya and Madeline and Emma and Bethany and their mommies and daddies were all here, and there were balloons all over the place and pink flowers from our yard on the table. The ‘puter was playing all my favorite Veggies Tales songs and some loud songs that are fun to dance to.

All the daddies went outside and helped us nail together firetrucks with holes in the back to hold crayons. Hannah’s daddy said the very first thing to do with any project is to take the instructions and very carefully throw them on the floor. Maybe that’s why Daddy and I were the only ones that didn’t have to take it apart to finish putting it together, or borrow some extra pieces so we didn’t snap the axles while trying to put the roof on. I painted flowers on mine. We raced them down the driveway, and all the daddies told stories about these Pinewood Derby things they had way back in prehistoric times.

We took turns playing on the swing while we waited for Daddy and Hannah’s daddy to hang a rope from the tree for Winnie-the-Pooh to hang from. We poked him about a bit with half of the old shower curtain rod. Then we pulled on the ribbons, and Mommy got the one that opened the bottom and candy fell out. We each took one and left the rest, and all the mommies and daddies laughed at us and tried to get us to take more. Mommy had used her crinkly scissors to cut out some hearts and glued them to paper bags for us to put our candy in. Daddy got out his balloons and made a green giraffe and a blue elephant and a pink mouse and a red swan and a white rabbit. We liberated a couple of our balloons. Now the airplanes will have some to play with too.

We went inside and I got to paint my fingernails bright red, and put stickers on my fingers and ears, and sparkle gloss on my lips. We had bracelets and rings filled with bubbles and diamond-shaped suckers. I don’t know what happened to all the daddies during this part of the party, I’m sure they were there a second ago…

I opened a whole pile of presents. Then we had hamburgers and corn on the cob and asparagus. Then Abba’s “Super Trooper” came on and we all ran around in the living room and screeched and chased balloons (except for Emma, who wanted to sit just quietly in the middle of the floor and smell the flowers … I mean, read a book).

Mommy and Daddy made a white butterfly cake and a German Chocolate heart cake. I blew out all my candles in two tries. After all the cake was gone, everybody who is anybody lined up to get their diapers changed. Then the party was over and everybody went home with their haul of firetrucks and crayons and balloons and paddle balls and pretty little purses.

Tonight I helped Daddy unload the dishwasher. I handed him all the plates and glasses so he could put them in the cupboard, and I put away all the silverware all by myself. Daddy and I sang “Deck the Halls” as loud as we could while we worked, although Daddy doesn’t seem to know the tune very well — I’m sure that’s either Handel’s “Messiah” or else Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus”. I put all my books on my shelves in the kitchen, although I really need to get Daddy to build me a proper book case, since they keep ending up on the floor and scattered throughout the house, an artifact which I attribute to a phenomenon known as the tunneling effect.

Grammy Cheryl and Mr. G and Aunt Mara came over for dinner. We had hamburgers and broccoli and squash and more cake. Mr. G said he likes Daddy’s home-brewed root beer, which I’m not allowed to have because it has more beer than root in it. Mara gave me a laptop computer, so I’ll soon be frequenting Internet cafes and blogging about my Web 2.0 experiences and writing beatnik poetry in hexadecimal.