Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen years ago, on a hot, humid, cloudy Pietermaritzburg summer afternoon, Emily was born. It was a beautiful, completely natural, labour and birth, with a fantastic midwife and our family doctor, who was so excited to have (literally) caught a baby that he dashed home to fetch his daughter so she could meet Emily. Emily was a peaceful, contented baby, and she has turned into a wonderful young woman. We are so lucky to have her in our lives.

Her sixteenth birthday began with hot chocolate in bed, followed by her paper round. It's a measure of her tenacity that she does her round every single morning, no matter how dark, cold and generally grim the weather may be.





I went with her this morning, and it was icy - but beautiful. Frosty holly...





... and an icy churchyard.





She opened her presents when we got home.





Roly couldn't stop himself from pouncing on the necklace...





At around 11, Bobby scraped the car (which, by the way, has recently developed a horrible squeak, which is going to be seen to on Friday, doubtless at vast expense), and we set out.





Stephen looked happy at this point in the back of the car; by the time we got to the restaurant, though, he was feeling queasy.





He has always been a horrible car traveller; lucky for him we don't need to use the car much these days. Fortunately he recovered in time for lunch at Jimmy Spice's, where we ate a totally delicious meal. Here we are, happy but faintly nauseous after having eaten quite a bit too much.





Then we walked down the street to see Twilight. I was not expecting to enjoy this movie in the least, but actually it was pretty good. I still have more than a few feminist issues with it, mind you. But I've told Em I'll read the second book as soon as she's done with it (she started it this evening) so we can talk about it.

And this evening we hung out, played a bit of Wii fit, and watched Juno (because we've been meaning to watch it for ages, and it's the latest of our Lovefilm movies to arrive.) Sweet and funny, though again, I have a few feminist issues with it.

It's just about midnight now, and Emily has just gone up to bed. She likes to get the maximum mileage out of each birthday, which makes sense, seeing as she only gets one a year. She enjoyed her day, and we enjoyed sharing it with her. We are so lucky to have our sunny-natured, kind-hearted, super-organised Emmy; I can't help wishing that she wasn't growing up quite so fast.