Like all neurotic parents of my generation, I was compelled to indulge my boy with a big ol’ birthday party. In my defense, I had yet to actually throw a party for him (despite the fact that his older brother has already logged a gala at the zoo, a neighborhood-wide Halloween/Birthday bash, and another we like to call “The Chuck E. Cheese Incident.”)
Because the weather in San Francisco is so unreliable—especially in the summer—I decided to hold a little soiree at The Party Playhouse instead of our own home. Read: a warehouse in the middle of a low-rent industrial area, not even within the city limits. And I'm sure that just because I’m a big fan of irony, we were actually blessed with one of the hottest days on record anyway, so essentially we invited family and friends to sweat-it-up in a ghetto-fabulous warehouse on the outskirts of hell. Of course. But who cares because the kids loved it. The sweatier and stinkier, the better.
The décor (if you can call it that) at The Party Playhouse is all castles and dragons, so I OF COURSE felt compelled to stay within the theme.
“I want a Spiderman party.”
“I’m not sure…How about a knights and dragons party?”
“Is Spiderman a knight?”
“Ummm…he could be. As long as we can make sure that he’s a purple and yellow Spiderman. And very small. Maybe like an invisible Spiderman.”
“OK.”
Man, sometimes Liam is such an easy sell.
“And you know what kind of cake we should have, big boy?!”
“What, Mom?!”
“A DRAGON CAKE!”
“Like with Spiderman on it?”
“No. Just a dragon. Here, let’s work on it together.”
OK, now THIS Liam loved. He got to be in charge of the green icing. Especially the part when he kept scooping it out of the bowl with his fingers while I was trying to ice each damn cupcake. (My sincere apologies to everyone who actually ate the aftermath of our teamwork-in-cooking.)
“There. We’re done. What do you think?” Smiling, almost ready to pat myself on the back. “We do good work, don’t we?”
“Mom, where are the dragon’s wings?”
Really? Remind me about the wings AFTER the cake is done?
So it turned out to be more of a gigantic salamander cake. But again, it was a cupcake arrangement for four year olds. Four year olds who only care about how much icing is actually on each serving of cake they are given. In fact, they don’t even care that I forgot to add vegetable oil to one of the batches of cupcakes. Not one of them said, “Hey, this cupcake would be great, but it seems to be missing about a 1/3 cup of vegetable oil.” Four year olds are very very forgiving and therefor very awesome in my book.
Anyway, all in I think I invested about 9 days of planning, shopping, goodie-bag assembling, inflatable knight sword blowing-upping, dragon cake sort-of making, and general hand-wringing. In comparison to 9 months of pregnancy, I suppose that’s not bad. And yet, throughout the process I saw some similarities to the birth of a child and the annual celebration of said child’s birth.
- Preparing for these celebrations involves a lot of labor.
- In order to handle the labor successfully you can either A) plan ahead with classes, a birth/event plan, and (at the very least) making sure a camera is in your bag, or B) do a lot of screaming, swearing and crying at the last minute. Ask strangers to e-mail you pictures because you can't find your camera.
- The labor becomes MUCH easier once you are on your drug of choice (Epidural. Gin & tonic. Whatever.)
- The exhaustion/elation you experience after these blessed events often prevents you from properly retaining important details—details that were you to remember them, would make next time easier. Like, maybe, “why exactly am I putting myself through this hell again?!”
- You do it all because you love the child you are doing it for.
Lastly, I feel compelled to make a few shout outs to some of our most generous guests…
To the multiple friends who gave bug collection devices, kits and CAGES for said bugs—cages that enable crawling, flying and buzzing critters to become inside pets, I say: THANK YOU! I can’t wait to be invited to your kids’ birthdays now. I totally know what I'll give to your children.
To the particular family member who gave the large rubber bouncy ball: THANK YOU! However, you might not want to read about the fate that befell our beloved yoga ball…
And to the family member who gave not one, not two, but THREE loud, blinking, shrieking, plastic, battery-operated Spiderman vehicles: THANK YOU! I guess you forgot that I know where you live and I that have the code to the gate. You might want to sleep with one eye open for a while and definitely not let your rose bushes go unguarded. (And please spare me the line about payback being a bitch, etc., etc. You are my mom first, and the their grandma second.)
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