Halloween is quickly approaching, a family favorite in my house. Well, that may not be the most accurate of interpretations, especially when the middle child cowers in fear whenever we approach the seasonal aisles in Target starting at the end of September. But you know what? Until they're old enough to put the decorations up themselves, we'll always be decked out from September 15th until November 15th in witches and zombies and pumpkins and skeletons.
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| Oh, fine. It's always Halloween in this house. |
Halloween, however, means so much more than just paper cutouts on the walls and pumpkins carved on the front step. Halloween, once over, leads to the inevitable Thanksgiving, and that dear readers is when all hell breaks loose. Every year the end-of-November tradition is to drive over to Wisconsin to visit the husband's family and celebrate all sorts of things in one go, since trips aren't as frequent as we'd like. It's nice to catch up, unwind, enjoy each other's presence. We make gingerbread houses, play with all the toys only found and Grandma and Grandpa's house, eat a turkey dinner, the girls see their aunt and uncles and new cousin, we enjoy a breakfast usually made by papa and A, I indulge in the rare Dunkin Donuts (every. single. morning). It's wonderful.
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| He's got infinitely more patience than I have. |
However, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the entire three days worth of holiday was tarnished by this voice in the back of my head reminding me of what awaits on the other side. Somehow the universe, in all its infinite wisdom and goodness, decided to bless me with winter babies. Three of them. Two in December. One in January. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this... December 1st, on the tail of Thanksgiving, is A. December 24th, Christmas Eve (because she does as she pleases) is N. January 19th, a slight reprieve, is W. And in there we have Christmas, we have gift giving with all the rest of our family and friends, another few birthdays and parties to attend and the ringing in of the New Year.
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| A spoonful of vodka makes the vitamin v go down... |
By December 19th we're so frazzled and in a word DONE, that it's hard to enjoy much of anything. Because everything is so jam-packed, we decided a while back to take a firm stance on birthdays and the prioritizing of birthday parties. More specifically, which ages are the "big" ones. Together (I use that word very loosely since I count as two votes in this house) we decided on 1, 5, 10, 13 and 16.
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| But only after attempting to do a party every year for the first child. |
The FIRST is obvious, I would think, but it was a battle. On one hand, he argues, the child will never remember this birthday. On the other, I retort, it's the first YEAR mark she has, not to mention that's an entire 12 months I managed to keep a non-communicative (in the bigger sense of the word. of course she could cry and coo but sometimes I would've loved for her to open her mouth and discuss with me the problems with the breast milk) creature breathing, eating, excreting and hopefully growing and learning at the same time without completely losing my mind in the process. When the subsequent children came, that was exponentially more difficult and so an even bigger success worthy of grander celebration, if I do say so myself.
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| Calm down, Pooh. That kind of behavior is what got us here in the first place. |
Five...we're going to be starting real school. Honest to god school. The five-to-seven year leap is upon us. We're going to start losing teeth, if we haven't lost a few already. FIVE! That's half of a decade. We made it through terrible twos and this-sucks-threes and frankly-crappy-fours, and have arrived to the time when we thrust them into society, shut our eyes tight and hope for the best when they arrive home each day.
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| Ok sweetie, slap on a princess dress and walk through the streamers, such is your initiation into society. |
Ten? Seriously? Do I even need to argue my point? Double digits! Half way to the the excruciatingly long one year wait until drinking age! Luckily, he understood ten. And five, though he wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was. 13 might not involve much from mom and dad in the way of pretty party favors and such but there needs to be a cool cake and delicious food and some good entertainment that probably will be more expensive than a homemade version of pin-the-pepperoni-on-the-pizza.
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| They even got to decorate the pin-able pepperoni pieces. Cool at this age. Probably not at 13. |
In today's world, you might be able to see why we're having some trouble here. When there's shows like this all over T.V.:
How can I justify a little two or three friend outing for some pizza and a movie and a from scratch cake at our dinner table? How can I look my oldest daughter in those enormous, sad, teary eyes after attending party after party all school year and summer break long for her friends and tell her that leaving a few of her friends out won't be that big of a deal? How do I explain to a seven-nearly-eight-year-old that in this economy with jobs like mom's and dad's and student loan bills lurking around every mail delivery, a princess extravaganza just isn't sensible? If I told A that she could have a mani-pedi-spa party OR eat dinner for the next six months, she'd cover up that growling stomach with loud shouts about her beautiful nails.
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| Don't let A see this. It'll give her ideas. |
There's this growing pressure on moms to preform in the birthday party battle arena. Don't pretend. It might not be you, but those moms are out there... the ones who wait on bated breath to see if your daughter's dress is going to be frillier than theirs? More sequins? More sparkle? More shine? Will you buy the three tiered barbie cake complete with doll and fondant or will you settle for the corner grocery store sheet style with cheap piped buttercream?
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| Telling of a party her future fiancé will be having, isn't it? |
Every theme needs to be greater than the next. Circus parties followed by magician parties which inspire rock climbing and ocean diving and skiing parties. Every kid gets a little gift bag, because everyone deserves a present, and those gift bags should never include crappy candy or cheap-o plastic junk. Where's your creativity? Your decorations better be from The Pottery Barn or Neiman Marcus or something like that. Balloons? Passé. Doesn't she know how to roll the streamers so the tape isn't showing? In fact, if you didn't choose every element of that child's party from a Pinterest board and craft each one from up-cycled resources on your own during your oodles of free time, well then really, how good of a mom are you?
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| Well. I guess it's OK. But I bet she didn't make those puff ball looking thingies herself. |
How do you choose who to invite? These days, in our "everyone's a winner!" culture, we are too scared to leave anyone out for fear of being the cause of an individuals emotional scarring in formative years that leads to serial murders or mass shootings. Or just plain ole hurting someone's feelings. I quiver in fear over invitations, wondering whether or not other parents will call me after their child comes home hurt and sad that she/he wasn't invited. I remember one party in particular; A went to school and gave her teacher the invitations to put into the folders of the girls who were invited. Unfortunately, mom didn't know there were TWO Sophias in class, and didn't put the correct last initial, which resulted in inviting the "wrong" Sophia which A then announced the mistake in front of the entire class when "wrong Sophia" brought up how excited she was for the gymnastics party! Son-of-a-bitch.
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| Sorry Sophia. Party was cancelled on account of my kid was too much of a mean girl to deserve a party at all this year. |
Naturally, both Sophias were welcomed and attended.
But how do you choose? When there's family with small kids around the same age, when there's Facebook where you, naturally, want to post all the fancy pictures documenting the amazing shenanigans and consequently show all the people who weren't lucky enough to warrant an invitation? It's impossible, especially with as many cousins and cousins' children and friends and friends' children as we have. Someone is going to be left out. And, as far as I can tell, the mom falls under the scrutiny almost every single time. It's the competition of the thing, the Birthday Battle within the greater Mom Wars. The dads get left out of the drama, probably in part because they're just so good at avoiding it all. But the moms are responsible for everything, aren't they? We're under the most pressure to preform...I still haven't sorted out why. But it's an inescapable truth. When dads send their daughters to school with crazy hair and mismatched clothing, we wince and wonder what other people must've thought of how WE moms are caring for our kids. When the birthday party isn't as cool as Jimmy's or Sarah's and our child complains, we wonder and panic that the other kids might be talking about how lame our kid's mother is. It falls on us, most of the time. Even if we're just imagining it, we feel it, and that's enough to set us up for 18 odd years worth of annual party paranoia.
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| Lucky for us we have pretty awesome Grandmas who save the day, FREQUENTLY. |
That brings us back to "the big ones". Instead of experiencing this every single year with every single kid, an exponential nightmare, we will attempt to harness our excitement for our aging children and focus it on those we deemed landmark ages. Except...we have to do something don't we? We can't just ignore their birthday altogether. So we decided that this year we'll do one thing for the two December girls. One little get together with a friend or two at the indoor waterpark with that from scratch cake I love to bake and just a present or two for each of them. Nothing more. Who are we going to invite? Are we going to pay their way into the waterpark? It's expensive so...no. Well then, why don't we open it up to whoever feels like joining us? Mention where we'll be, if you want to come, come on down and meet us there. "But then isn't it a party?" He asks me. Then we need to make sure we have enough cake and enough favors and if it's a party for our kids we need to pony up cash to invite people so they don't get pissed about going to a party and bringing a present (not required, by the way, but I personally can't stand not bringing a present) AND paying cover charges... this is turning into a party. This is turning into work. A lot of work. Back to the original plan, a few friends. But........who do we invite? Ok, we get to pick. But she's turning eight, don't you think she'll resent us for choosing for her? And don't you think if we post pictures of their fun that everyone else is going to get mad at us for not involving them in the celebration of life lived and life to come? And I still need to buy Christmas presents as well as anything-BUT-red-and-green-wrapping-paper.
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| Happy birthday girls. Mom's given up. Dad's in charge now. |
In the end we'll work it all out and I'm sure our girls will feel loved and cherished and adored on their special days. But reflecting on the insanity of it all, one is left wondering how to gracefully step out of the fight, how to duck out of the ring when you don't feel like going even ONE round with the moms who want to engage you in these epic matches of "who obviously loves their kid more?". I want to believe my efforts will result in raising women who do not focus on the THINGS in life and instead on enjoying the moments and the love in life. Is that enough for now? Will that be enough for them as they grow up and envy the other kids for everything they get to do? Will they resent me for it, even if they do one day understand? Will they resolve to do more for their daughters than I did for them? Will they understand that I wanted so badly to do more but some years just couldn't? As far as I'm concerned, the memory of their most SPECIAL birthdays will live on in my heart forever, and I spend every single day of the year doing my best to show them how grateful I am for those three specific days of my life and of theirs.
I hope they understand that, for me, those particular parties will never be topped by anything I've ever had or ever will have in my life ever again. Nine month prep and weeks of cleanup be damned.
