How could she already be 6?

Nina is 6! 
We had a party, at a local "adventure playground". The ethos of these places is that children can go there and play independently, and learn to take risks. It's the kind of playing (they hope) that we all used to do when we went out and played on our own. There is a large park near my parents' house; I used to make forts, slide down the hill in the snow, even skate on the pooled water at the bottom that used to be a tiny creek. But in London we'd never let our children just roam the streets. Anyway, this place (and the other adventure playgrounds) is free to use, but children have to be 6, and she's been counting the days. She thinks it's really unfair that most of her friends have been 6 for ages. The party was a fun mix of children from school (who I mainly don't know at all, nor the parents), and old and new friends of ours. It was fun and everyone liked the cake (Alton Brown's Devil's Food cake, with purple icing, made by me). 

Nina at her 6th birthday party

  But I'll miss her being 5. She's been such amazing fun at 5. Being in Menerbes (Provence) last year, her so happy there with Max; playing games in Highgate wood, taking her to Canada and sliding down the snowy hill in that same park, taking her to the observatory and seeing Saturn, feeling her excitement as I held her up to the telescope and she saw it for herself. Seeing her get her Student of the Week award (most recently for knowing how to prepare an artichoke; once for climbing the rope all the way to the top of the school hall), her first chess games (guided), her first delighted songs on the piano, the way she loves playing them in all kinds of different ways. She even wrote one herself.
  She noted that you can count by 9s by going up 10 and then subtracting one, so there's a pattern; that when you do that, you never get to 11, and that when you count by 2s or 3s you also never get to 11. This was Nina at 5 1/2: on her way to discovering primes. But she believes in the tooth fairy. She has lost 3 teeth. 
  I loved watching her teach Annika the little dances for the pre-primary ballet exam. There are so many things I'm not thinking of right now. She gives Annika the window seat on the bus, and makes sure Annika can win the little mini-races we do when we're walking together. 
 My point: Nina is fantastic. Happy birthday, Nina. I will miss you being 5, but we'll have tons of fun while you're 6.