Remind Me About This Next Year

For all the fear and griping and stress and fretting… This first birthday party was totally worth it. Remind me of that next year when I protest and say I don’t want to do anything for his birthday.

Raise your hand if you like birthday parties. Ok, if you like birthday parties for one-year-olds with your extended family who you just saw last week (mothers day). Ok fine, maybe it’s just me, but the whole thing gives me anxiety like I never knew before. If it’s a daycare friend, or mike’s relative, or another kid Malcolm’s age, I feel stressed. Like, I know most of the parents, but these aren’t my best friends, and I can’t quite totally relax because I’m either chasing Malcolm, or I’m trying to (politely) stop someone else from feeding him crap. Part of that is my shyness/introversion and I can usually overcome that pretty quickly… Or grin and bear it for two hours. And part of that is my protectiveness (overly?) of Malcolm. And of course, other people (relatives) see this as their chance to scoop him up and get in some quality time. But there’s a part of me that wants to hold him the whole time and not share him at all. Because all these years (10 years) of suffering infertility in silence (by my own choice) has really done a number on me. There was a time when birthday parties and baby showers and a random Friday night at my dad’s restaurant would instill a fear and jealousy in me like no other. And while the miracle of adoption and Malcolm have healed my heart, part of me still dreads facing “all those babies,” and so I just have grown to dread birthday parties. There are exceptions, of course. My godchild, and my close friends. But mostly, I just send a gift and don’t show up. Terrible, I know.

So on top of my dread of parties, I was also not really into the idea of hosting one. Want me to host a few friends at Christmas time? No prob – couple bottles of wine, couple cases of beer, a clean house and some jambalaya, and we’re all set. But host extended relatives, friends, and a million kids?? Argh!! So. Much. Pressure. Have you seen what Pinterest has single-handedly done to the first birthday party? Yikes. So I stomped my feet and (seriously) said I wouldn’t have a party. We conveniently had a family vacation planned right after his birthday, so there just wouldn’t be time for a big party. Well, with Murf’s medical expenses, a family trip to Disney just wasn’t in the budget anymore. So after much debate, we decided to have a low-key, simple party. Ha! Low key! Simple! Yeah right.

My idea of low-key was a home-made cake and cupcakes, a few custom decorations bough off of etsy.com and a pot of jambalaya. Family alone was about 50 people, so just a few more friends and we have a party. Then I decided that it should be a splash bash. The decorations I found online had cute little whales on them. My Parrain has a big blow up water slide that we could use for free- just have to clean it, Mike made a sprinkler out of PVC pipe, and his mom had bought Malcolm a blow-up pool for him to play in this summer. We were set! Somehow, a jambalaya turned into jambalaya, fruits, veggies, nachos and hot dogs and chili. Plus cake and cupcakes and ice cream, of course. And a few simple decorations became a Pinterest-inspired cake table with tissue poms hanging from the ceiling, a beautiful cake made by Mike’s mom, with mini fabric pennants and a number 1 topper made of melted and molded almond bark and color-coordinated sprinkles, three dozen cupcakes in coordinated colors and sprinkles, with cute little toppers that matched the birthday banner. I’m a last minute person, but this was no last-minute party. Mike’s mom is a type-A planner. Weeks in advance, she was pressuring me to buy the flags for the cake. She drove an hour to a specialty bakery shop to purchase the right color sprinkles and cupcake liners. She was showing me test cake toppers she had made, and suggesting improvements. She kindly offered to thoroughly clean our house the week of the party, so I had to tidy up before she came over. No last-minute-shove-it-all-in-a-closet clean sweep would cut it. In short, she was stressing me out. Or was she just my scapegoat for my stress, and I was really stressing myself out by dragging my feet and procrastinating? Hmmm…

On Wednesday before the party, Mike pulled a muscle in his back while trying to unload the water slide from the trailer. The doctor gave him a cortisone shot, and a prescription for pain meds, muscle relaxers and a pack. Cortisone pack? Idk. He had strict instructions to not lift and take the next two days off of work. Poor Mike. Telling him to keep still is about the worst thing you can do to him. By the day of the party, he was thankfully, feeling better. The list of reasons to stress goes on and on. I was leaving for a work trip to Orlando on the Monday following the party and there was just so much emotion tied up in that one weekend – first birthday party plus my first trip out of town, alone, since Malcolm was born.

Can I just say, after all the stress and planning, that it was totally worth it? Sure, we can scale back a bit next year. Less food, less decorations, less beer (or better placement of beer so that people know where it is and actually drink it?), but it really was worth it. The kids loved the water slide, the pool, and the sprinkler. We also had a miniature bounce house in the front yard, and the kids loved that too. Except Malcolm. He was terrified of the water, didn’t care much about his smash cake, and couldn’t be bothered to open presents. And that was fine by me. It’s his party. I didn’t mind spoiling him a little. And if that meant to just let him do his thing when he wanted to do it, fine. So he mostly just walked around in his swim trunks, no shirt, ignoring his friends in the pool. The grown-ups held him, and he kinda just did his own thing. All the people and toys everywhere may have overwhelmed him. The first party is really for the parents anyway, right? That’s what everyone says. Except it was really for us, his parents, and our parents, his grandparents. They probably enjoyed it just as much. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep with a smile on my face. I felt accomplished. It was a success.