Sabrina turned 6. I’m not sure how that happened so don’t ask. She is 6 and in the first grade. Makes my brain hurt to realize how quickly the years have passed. She is currently a huge fan of My Little Ponies. She asked for Rainbow Dash party. She ended up having a small sleepover (who knew those started so early? she was the only sleep over virgin of the 3 of them) so there was no themed party (phew). As a consolation, I offered to make rainbow cupcakes to take into her class on her birthday. My only guide was that my friend Michelle, from Burgh Baby, said it was easy and just to separate into bowls and color then pour. But she is one of those over-achieving birthday moms who makes cupcake masterpieces for her daughter to take to school every year. And I don’t bake. Seriously, I ended up in tears over the stupid Christmas cookie exchange for my mom’s club last year. I think the source of my baking failure is that I don’t follow directions well. But look how pretty (I showed them off on Facebook so don’t roll your eyes if we are friends there):

For anyone who would like to wow your children with similar lovely treats, it really was simple. I mixed up 2 boxes of white cake mix and split it between 6 smaller plastic bowls.  I added sufficient food coloring to turn them bright red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I layered them in the rainbow cupcake liners and baked. I was afraid the colors would run together. They didn’t.

I frosted them with Ducan Hines new mix-ins frosting – cotton candy flavor. (Not a paid shout out. And seriously not as icky as it sounds…didn’t taste bad at all.)  Then I topped with a strip of sour fruit strips. The kids at school and the birthday girl were all quite impressed. And I, obviously, was quite impressed with how well they turned out. Hence my repeated showing off of the pretty cupcakes.

Cupcakes aside, Sabrina had a great birthday. The sleepover went okay. I don’t think we’ll have another for awhile but the girls had fun overall.

Her other piece of excitement this month was a brush with cheerleading. She took a 1 afternoon cheerleading clinic at the local high school and then got to cheer during half time at the football game. She was nervous and excited and thought it was all quite cool. She didn’t really bother to learn the little routine but instead spent most of her time on the field trying to do a handstand. But she had a great time. Tessa thought it was cool and cheer for Sabrina the whole time. “Go  Sabrina!” It was all a lot of cute.

 This head thrown back laughter is the essence of Sabrina.

 ”Yay Sabrina!”

Otherwise we are just trying to keep up with site words and book reading and math and homework for the first grade. Sabrina needs to work a little harder to master the skills required. If things are hard or not fun, she tends to give up. As a result, she doesn’t test well at school. They sent home a report that she didn’t do well in number recognition. Looking at the test (assessment not graded test), I could see exactly where she lost interest and just started throwing out random guesses so she could stop doing it. I’m not sure how to motivate her but we keep working. Her reading improves each week – unless she isn’t in the mood to do it and then she pretends to not know a single word.