Happy Half-Birthday to You--With Cake!

We do half-birthdays in our family. It's not a big deal, but it's something the kids have looked forward to every year since they were toddlers--what kid *wouldn't* want to know the exact day on which they can officially add that "and a half" to their age?

For me, it's my yearly preview of being shocked at how old they are. Two AND A HALF?!? She's practically grown! Five AND A HALF?!? She'll be driving before I know it! Nine AND A HALF?!? She's over halfway to leaving me forever!!!

Twelve and a half. How did she get so big, so old, so smart? I was right there the whole time, and yet to me she's still that fussy not quite two-year-old in footie dinosaur pajamas, rubbing her eyes and grumpily insisting that she's not tired.

One of the tenets of the half-birthday, of course, is that you get your very own half-cake. I've written about how to make a half-cake here, but it's also not rocket surgery. I'm sure you can figure it out. This year, Syd was thrilled to have the responsibility to make Will's half-cake, and had it planned out to the hour, even casually suggesting to Will that she might want to be dropped off at the library after playgroup that day. I picked her up from there just before fencing, and therefore the sneaky younger sister had an entire afternoon and evening to make the perfect from-scratch chocolate cake, let it cool, frost it with homemade frosting artfully dripped down the side, and decorate it with peppermint candy melts that she'd piped into the numbers 1, 2, and 1/2.

She watches a LOT of baking videos on YouTube, Y'all.

The cake was a hit:

How could it not be, when it was created with such love?

A half-birthday: a bonus, mid-year opportunity to marvel at how big, how old, how smart, how generous, how loving these two are getting to be:

She's a lucky twelve-and-a-half-year-old to have a sister like that.