Happy Birthday to Pinky

Had Delia's party today. Invited more or less everyone we know who I thought might be mildly interested in attending, and more than a few of them showed up! So between our families and friends, we had quite the gang.

My Mom
My brother, his wife, three of their sons ages 9, 7, and 4
My Aunt and her son age 16 (Mom's side)
My cousin, her two daughters ages 15 and 11, and the daughter age 2.5 of another cousin (all Dad's side),
My Grandmother (Dad's side)
Old friend and her daughter age 6, son age 14 months
J's Mom & Dad
J's sister, her husband, son age 5, daughter age 5 months
J's other sister, her husband, son age almost 5, daughter age 21 months, daughter age 9 weeks
J's yet another sister
J's old friend and her son age almost 2
Pastor Dave and Marie (aka Mrs. Pastor Dave) from church
Old friends Mark and Eric

Mmmm, I think that's it. We had kids everywhere. Not counting anyone over the age of 11, we had 13 of them. Delia toddled around after the other kids and was charming and sweet, and all of the kids were pretty well-behaved.

Delia declined her usual afternoon nap so was completely exhausted by the time it was all over, and crashed hard when I went to put her down for the night.

She got many lovely gifts: doll and doll buggy, books, clothes (some handmade by my Mom), toys. And an electronic drum set! From J's sister Amy and her family, a retaliatory response to a drum set that J and I gave their son for Christmas 2003. It was a little drum filled with other instruments -- tambourine, maracas, toy trumpet. They gleefully gave Delia a Leapfrog Learning Drum for Christmas as a warm-up for the day she could handle a larger drum... Which evidently is now.

We put her in the highchair with a cake of her very own to maul, which could have gone better. We had put a dinky little birthday candle in it and were singing Happy Birthday to her and despite my (apparently ineffectual) efforts, her little hand shot out and grabbed that candle. She got a bit of hot wax on her finger which resulted in much wailing... I felt so bad. Once we got it cooled off and I sneaked a smidgen of frosting into her mouth, she calmed down and got to work on the cake. Really she didn't eat that much of it, just a bit of frosting, but took her time and seemed content. And, um, did you know that green frosting stains skin? At any rate, she was a great little birthday girl and enjoyed her day I think.

I am so beat. Time for bed, methinks.