Super Sweet Sixteen

Just under sixteen years ago something happened in my life that changed me in ways I could never have imagined. An event that shook me to my very core and would have far reaching effects that I could never have envisaged.

You see sixteen years ago this thursday my princess, Victoria Elizabeth, was born. I could fill the internet with words declaring my love for her. Telling you all how wonderous she is, how happy she makes me and how lucky I feel to have her in my life. We all think our children are perfect don't we and I'm no exception. I adore her in ways it would be impossible to describe. I love her smile, her laugh, her wit, her outrageousness, even her washing up phobia - everything about her... everything but one incy wincy little thing...

I've called her princess from the moment she was born and now, well, she expects to be treated like one. Those far reaching effects I mentioned, one of them has been the steady decline in my bank balance! She wants, she asks and I, being wrapped around her little finger, am helpless to resist.

The latest incursion on my financial stability (and there have been MANY over the last sixteen years) is the PARTY. Her Super Sweet Sixteenth birthday party. I blame MTV, they spent a whole year showing little rich girls having these ridiculously expensive parties and Vix decided she too would quite like one. This is all well and good and were I rich I'd be wholeheartedly on board. But I'm not rich, I'm happily comfortable when not faced with party bills in the many digits.

'It must be the best, it must be perfect, I can not have a substandard party MOM!' Vix said to me, mere hours ago when I questioned the need for a three tier cake.
'Yes but...' I replied.
'There are no buts mom!' she insisted, with a I-want-I-must-have-do-not-try-and-gainsay-me gleam in her eye. 'Do you want me to die of shame in front of my friends? Do you want people to say my party wasn't epic? Do you? I'm only sixteen once mom, this is the only time I'll ever be able to have a sweet sixteenth and you're moaning about money?!'
I mumble something along the lines of it doesn't grow on trees.
'Don't you want to make me happy?' she asks, her perfect brown eyes suddenly all wide and her little lip pouting. I rush to reassure her that of course I do, that she's my princess and I always want her to be happy.
'You're the bestet mom in the world,' she replied, taking my reassurance as agreement to her latest demand. And that was that.

You see Vix knows just how to get her own way, she knows I am putty in her hands and this is how a small party with her closest friends has turned in to this huge event, in a bar, with a DJ and seventy people, and food, and drinks, and decorations, and an expensive outfit and so on and on. In later life I stongly suspect that she'd make a wonderful dictator.

So I will spend the next week making decorations and baking cakes and doing a million and one things to get everything perfect for her. Perhaps I should be sterner, maybe I should put my foot down and tell my princess that she can't have the stretch limo or the hundred balloons or the custom made cupcakes. Some might indeed say that she is just a wee bit spoilt... and I might, just might be inclined to agree.

But you know what, the last sixteen years that this wonderful person has been in my life have been the bext sixteen years. My Vix has enriched me in ways it is impossible to state. She's made me laugh, made me cry, made me run the gauntlet of emotions. There isn't a day that I don't feel eternally grateful, that I don't feel shockingly blessed to have been given her as my daughter. What's a healthy bank balance compared to that?