Two Birthdays
There has been a lull in the birthdays my kids were invited to over the last year. It may have been the change of schools or due to some other reasons, but I enjoyed not having to drag myself to those birthdays. They still had some here and there, but it wasn’t multiple times a month, which I was very thankful of.
Recently, my 4 year old son C has been playing with one of his best friends at school and she had her birthday scheduled for the summer pretty early. We RSVP’ed early and I knew that one we couldn’t miss. A few weeks later, two of his best friends who he has known since he was around 2 years old also sent out birthday invitations (they had a joint birthday). When I went to put it in the calendar after RSVP’ing, it turns out it was on the same day as his best friend from daycare.
I was thinking about how I was needing to drag my kids to two birthday parties that day and had been dreading it the whole time. Now, I also had to do the soccer training for C and his 6 year old sister E in the morning. I knew they would potentially be tired, cranky, hungry, or overstimulated. It was going to be a long day and it finally arrived. I needed to be prepared, so I downed a lot of coffee.
Soccer ended up fine and the parent session at the end dragged a bit too long, so we were an hour late to the first birthday. That also meant being more than an hour late for lunch because of traffic. Somehow, my kids are in such a good mood from soccer and that carried over to the long commute. By the time we got to the first birthday, they went nuts. I shoveled food into their mouths and they went off playing.
The birthday dragged longer than expected and even though we missed the cake and singing, they had so much fun. There was a slip and slide, s’mores, and lots of other activities to do. It was also a good birthday where the parents were so talkative and friendly. Made things much more bearable because I never really know what to expect when I haven’t met all the parents yet. We stuck around and ended up leaving to get to the second birthday roughly on time.
My wife said she wanted to go with us and I was surprised because that meant lugging out 1 year old son L along as well. It was a pleasant surprise because I love it when we are all at an event together. The kids have fun and we can both help out with whatever comes up. I scoop them up and off we went.
The second birthday was also outdoors and had multiple bounce houses, carts on tracks to drive, bubble making with large strings, and all sorts of things for the kids to do. It was honestly a blur because I had to chase my kids around for a bit and catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. My wife had to wrangle L mostly and even though it was tiring, I think she had a good time too.
After a long day, we all made it home and it was time to get showered up for bedtime. The day actually turned out well and there weren’t tantrums. I was pleasantly surprised and my kids were exhausted. That in itself is the best gift to a parent despite us giving out tons of gifts today. It was a great day and a day where I hope my kids have a core memory of for a long time (or at least a feeling that some tired parents rallied and made sure they made the most out of the day for them!).
