Clara is 4

More than a month ago, Clara turned four years old.


She had a very nice birthday party on the weekend, with three friends that she invited herself (and we made the invitations together, too): Sampo (who came to visit for the weekend with his family), and two boys from Clara's Kita group, Dan Nam and Ivica. Clara spends one afternoon a week with Dan Nam at his house (or sometimes at ours) to play - his mom likes that he has some more time to practice German this way. Clara really likes these visits. After one of the first ones she told us matter-of-factly that she's going to live at Dan Nam's house from now on. They listen to music, they get to play on Dan Nam's big brother's piano, they watch some cartoons once in a while, they play with all of Dan Nam's toys, and by now Clara even eats dinner at their house when she's there.


Ivica, of course, is Clara's "best friend" - and has been for two and a half years now. He has been in her day care group ever since he started, and they were always good friends. The friendship changes as they get older... today Clara told me (as she has told me several times this week) that when they are adults, Ivica will be the daddy when she has children. She says Ivica always plays "mommy and daddy" with her and the dolls (as kids) at their Kita.


Anyway, back to the birthday, which Louie spent as seen in the picture. All the boys, especially Sampo and Dan Nam, are very excited about our cats whenever they are here - way more excited than the cats would like.

In the morning, Clara got to unwrap her gifts from the family.

We had the cake in the afternoon with the kids. It wasn't so easy to keep four three-year-olds (all the boys are a little younger than Clara) happy for three hours, while also keeping two toddlers (Oscar and Sampo's little sister Venla) out of their hair. But the cake was a success.

For the first time, we also got to play games at the party. We played Topfschlagen, a classic German children's party game, and several of Clara's kids' games.

Clara really enjoyed her birthday party, and was very sad when it ended, and especially when Sampo had to leave again the next day.

Happy (belated) birthday, big girl!