Birthday Gauntlet

 

This weekend marks the last of the household birthday celebrations that all cluster around the same week at the end of April. Son turning thirteen, another sixteen, and husband turning studio 54. This week-- lovingly dubbed the "birthday gauntlet" is a predictable major source of stress for me each year. 

I think it's because I feel responsible for making my kids' days fun and special so I worry excessively and put pressure on myself-- but I also enjoy it.

I love coming up with birthday themes and decorations the way my mother did for me growing up. I have fond memories of gingerbread-house making parties and celebrations at the local rollerskating rink, sporting my favorite turquoise velour sweatsuit. My mother threw me a murder mystery party in middle school, where all my friends dressed up in 1940's clothing. Someone actually arrived wearing pearls and a mink stall. Yeah, my mom did birthdays really well. She always went to a lot of trouble to make it fun and that made me feel special. 

For my eldest son's second birthday we threw a "Choo-choo-choo, I'm turning two" party. We had just moved into our first house, a small yellow Spanish bungalow, and we were in the middle of re-seeding our front lawn. The day before the party, I was horrified that our closest friends would have to walk through a dirt-strewn disaster of a front yard. My husband cleverly came up with a sign that said "Railroad under construction," which made me fall in love with him all over again. It was genius and successfully quelled my frothing anxieties.

Since then we've had a number of other parties - one at a gymnastics place, where I handmade 35 award "medals" using ribbon and small wooden discs. For some reason I also felt the need to add second theme. Naturally, to go with gymnastics, I chose movies and popcorn (???). I stuck mini marshmallows together to form kernels of popcorn and displayed them in those tall plastic popcorn containers from Target. But, no, I gotta say, those actually came out looking pretty cool.

We threw our one and only park birthday party, "Super Spy" themed. It was so much work because there was so much to transport. But it was one of my favorites, creating a spy identification badge-making station with kid-friendly ink fingerprinting and spy training obstacle course. Thank God my in-laws were there to transport an extra carload of supplies and work the obstacle course. I wouldn't have been able to pull it off without them. 

The last 2 years, it's been much easier. What a luxury-- to farm out all the work to vendors like Dave and Buster's and Sky Zone. It almost feels like cheating but I'm not complaining. I don't have to clean up the house, spend hours hand-making decorations, creative foods and inventing games. My kids are outgrowing themed parties which I'm happy and sad about at the same time. Glad to not have to do the work, but kinda sad to say good-bye to that phase of childhood. Like those oversized, over-priced balloon bouquets I bought to dress up D&B's, that end up looking dejected in my living room-- once floating high and strong, slowly descending, until eventually even the mylar ones end up shriveled on the floor. It's a bummer to see them go, but they've served their purpose well.