The Junior Princess Turns Four

Mercie's birthday party was last week.

Things I learned:

• When a group of four-year old girls get together, they are completely unintelligible. They sound something like a room full of poodles and parakeets.
• Four year old girls have complex and discriminating tastes. One girl would not eat her cake because the frosting was pink and she doesn't like pink frosting. A short time later I noticed her bringing a chunk of something gummy & squishy to her mouth, and I wondered where she got the fruit snack, since we weren't serving fruit snacks. Then she repeated the motion and I remembered that four year old girls are still firmly in the "booger eating" phase. That ended my appetite for pink frosting. Or cake. Or anything else.
• Four year old girls are much smarter than older girls. I told the girls the story of the Princess who kissed a frog. I put bright red lipstick on the girls and pointed to a computer-generated picture of a frog taped to the wall at four-year old height, and told them they could try kissing the frog. S. and C. were terrified that a prince would pop out and scare them. E. was afraid she would get slimy on her lips. Mercie just wanted somebody else to go first. I finally coaxed them all into doing it, and there were neat rows of little lip prints all over the white edge of the paper around the frog. I asked the girls what they thought of that story and E. said, "It's kind of dumb." Excellent observation! We girls must get stupider as we get older, to believe that the slim possibility of getting a prince is worth kissing a blechy frog.
• A big bag of M&Ms is more than enough to decorate four birthday cakes, with plenty left over. Mia had a rainbow cake, Mercie got the tastefully simple crown and trim you see above (yes, I know pink and brown is so *last year* but four year old girls are not yet that style conscious), Eric is getting a car that will test my M&M artistic abilities, and Grace wants some kind of rockstar image--she's voting for a portrait of Hannah Montana in the medium of candy-covered chocolate--with the last birthday of the bunch she'll be lucky to get a cupcake with sprinkles.
• Four year old girls like to giggle. A lot.
• Four year old girls like to hug and kiss each other. A LOT.
• Four year old girls are just the cutest thing out there. Except Adi, because she's my favorite cutest thing. And Adam, who doesn't want to be my favorite cutest thing anymore. Still, totally adorable.

I'm not sure what Mercie thought, but Mommy had a blast :).