Happy Birthday Sofia!

We had an amazing day celebrating Sofia’s 9th birthday! Despite the pandemic, we really made it special.

First we made the rainbow cake together on Saturday. The girls helped out coloring them, that was fun!

the next day, the big day for her to accomplish her goal of running 9k on her 9th birthday. We started 6:30am, a bit nervous and sleepy. I didn’t run much but she ran with her friend Leia until 7km or so, and then she finished the last 1k with me. I could tell the last few hundred meters were hard for her, but she didn’t complain at all and kept pushing. I am so proud of her! She got to experience why I love running so much, the process of setting a goal for yourself and put the work day by day until the big day to achieve it. Right after we finished, she said she could probably do 12km next year. 😀

back home, the girls had breakfast and put up the decoration while I had to work. I know… really bad timing but got to do it. When I came out, everything was ready, so I finished decorating the cake, asked hubby to buy few things and ordered pizza.

around 11am, her friends started arriving. They all live in our building so pretty convenient.

we didn’t have anything special planned so they just made up games to play until pizza arrived.

the kids ate by themselves while hubby and I stayed in the studio eating our lunch (pizza and korean sushi) while watching some netflix. What a relaxed birthday party.

around 1:30pm we did cake. The cake turned out better than I thought and I felt so proud of it. We sang the song together while Sofia made the wish.

we made 6 layers with whipped cream as frosting and syrup peaches as filling, super fresh and not sweet (i used 1/3 of required sugar and it was perfect).

the kids left around 2:30pm as Sofia had a piano theory lesson at 3. Before that, she opened the gifts. We bought several few things for her and she loved them all. I think at this age, she still gets joy from getting more things than valuable things.

After her lessons, the girls went to the pool to continue the play with her friends. After dinner, she had facetime with her dad and grandma before 1 hr of TV. Last part of birthday celebration was to sleep with mama! We snuggled for a while recounting how wonderful was her birthday, before falling sleep few minutes later. I was exhausted although I didn’t do much, but happily exhausted to have organized a low key but special day for my girl.

As a 9 years old she has developed more agency and became more responsible. Although I still need to remind her to do some homework, more and more she knows what to do. She is outgoing and needs to spend time with her family and friends (unlike me that need alone time). She loves reading and any kind of physical activities, especially when is with friends. She’s really caring for grandma, she checks on her even for few minutes a day because grandma lives alone and she wants to make her company. She likes school, math, reading, PE, science, art, and she’s always excited to learn new things. She loves traveling and looking forward to new adventures. She still finds hard mandarin but she doesn’t complain about why she needs to do it anymore.

She’s really a pleasant person to be around and I am very proud of her. I can objectively say, she’s a better version of me in so many ways. 🙂