Birthday Chronicle

As Little Bee's 5th birthday approaches next month, she has beautiful memories of her birthday party with her best friends and has stopped asking me what else I have planned for her 5th birthday. 

A couple of days after her birthday party, she wrote a sweet-sounding journal entry in her diary, and I thought it encapsulated all that she felt, minus all those bombastic vocabulary words that adults use - which makes her little entry all the more endearing. 

In case the image is not clear, here was what she had written, with spelling help from me. 

"Today, I had my 5th birthday party. All my friends from my class came. My favourite part is putting make-up on my face. I am very happy because I have lots of presents."

She experimented with using some squiggly decorative fonts and cursive handwriting, hence some parts may be illegible. She drew the large, twirling and twinkling disco ball, the long catwalk runway, her birthday cake and her friends in her diary.  

As she approaches her 5th year in life, I could also sense her gradual maturity and cynicism, much like Big Bee now. This is evident in a conversation with Little Bee today: 

Little Bee: Mummy, who gives us all those presents under the Christmas tree? (she refers to all the anonymous presents under the tree that I always claimed were from Santa Claus, haha)

Me (looks at her with big, quizzical eyes): You should know the answer to that, right?

Little Bee: Is it Santa Claus?

Me: (nodded hesitantly, wondering if I should tell her the truth right now!)

Little Bee: (looking cynically at me) But, Mummy, there is no Santa Claus, right? Is he real?

Me: (dumbfounded and still undecided if I should tell her the truth, so decided to throw the question back to her!) What do you think?

Little Bee: NOOooooo....he is not real, he is just a fantasy! 

Me: (decided not to pull her leg anymore) Yes...you are right, Santa Claus is a fantasy figure!

I do miss my sweet, little innocent and naive babes :( 

However, that being said, the girls (even Big Bee!) still enjoy the thrill of receiving presents from "Santa Claus" - they will usually each receive a couple of mysteriously wrapped presents with unfamiliar handwriting of their names on the presents, and the sign-off of "S" - hmmm, I wonder who that would be? ;)