So obviously I knew it was coming, but it was still a shock that this morning I woke Hayley up not by shaking her and saying, “time to get up for breakfast” but rather by singing Happy Birthday in her ear. She pretended to be asleep but she just hasn’t learned yet that giggling is a dead giveaway. She wasn’t too thrilled about going to school, but when we got there she immediately announced to the other Kindergarten teacher that it was her birthday and then she trotted off towards the door. She took in a bunch of TimBits to celebrate with her class, then she even delivered one to the other Kindergarten teacher (she’s so nice, she always greets Hayley and would walk her right in if Hayley was having a hard morning) and another one to the principal. Good sucking up, way to go!

Mornings are not a total rush of insanity since I do almost everything the night before and get Hayley up way earlier than we need, but they’re busy enough that I didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of her in the morning. I rectified that when I met her after school and although I had had all day to think about how she was five now, I was shocked by pictures of my little grown-up girl.

When she got home we gave her the presents I had wrapped up for her. Breanna gave her Operation since Hayley loves board games more than pretty much any toy. Actually, when we were walking through the toy section on Monday, I said to George that the hardest part of buying her something is that she’s not really into any one thing. She’ll play Barbies but doesn’t really love them. She’ll play Polly Pocket with her friend but she doesn’t want any of her own. It’s like that with all toys, really, she likes them well enough but isn’t crazy over them. That was when George pointed out that she does love games so we went with that.

We gave her a stereo. She likes to go to sleep listening to the radio or music. I had given her my old boom box but I had gotten it as a teenager so it was old and the CD player just finally kicked the bucket one day. From there she started listening to the radio and even bought herself a tiny mini-boom box (palm sized) for five bucks at a garage sale but the antenna wasn’t very good and it was hard to pull in good stations (she likes the classic rock station best, go figure). She was really happy with the new stereo. It will play CDs again, it still has a radio, and it also has a tape deck so she can play the Barbie tapes she has. And it has a remote so she was ecstatic that she can put in the Carrie Underwood CD that we also got for her (her favorite singer) and play “Jesus Take the Wheel” eleventy billion times in a row from across the room.

She was also really happy to open up a gift from my sister. She got a pretty dress and another board game, Trouble. That was a hit. We played a game immediately and then she played another round with George after supper. Breanna is a little irate over these games she can’t play but I placated her by letting her slide the pieces for the Dora Candyland game around the board while Hayley and George played at the table, so that helped soothe her angered ego a little bit.

Of course, I think the best present for her is the fact that the school is closed for a ped day. Because, you know, three weeks in they need a day off. I thought she would be ecstatic over not having to go tomorrow, and she was until bed time, at which point she was greatly saddened that she wouldn’t get to play with her three favorite friends until Monday. That’s good news to me because it means school is improving for her!

I normally bake birthday cakes but our oven died and apparently it’s the element, not the fuse, whoopee. So, for the first time in my life I bought a birthday cake from Loblaws, our friendly grocery store. Their cakes are delicious, not dry and overly sweet like some bakery cakes are, with the Cinderella motif, it was really pretty. We’ll take care of the oven and I’ll bake a lady bug cake for her party next weekend but in the meantime, a princess cake was a huge hit.

I have a five year old child. I still don’t know how that happened since I only gave birth last week. But there it is. She’s growing up and time is just not going to stop, ever.

More photos are available on Flickr.

Happy birthday, Hayley!