My mother was the queen of birthday parties when I was growing up. Each year there would be a theme with coordinated craft projects, games, homemade piñatas and birthday cakes. Someday I will have to do a post in her honor with photos of all of the extraordinary things she made for my parties. When Luke and Jaz turned 3, I decided that it was time for me to test out my birthday-party-mom genes. The theme was bugs, and I made a butterfly piñata (full of bug stickers) and caterpillar cupcakes. There was a treasure hunt (the "clues" were photographs of where the next clue was hidden) with bug-related treasures at the end, and a make-your-own puzzle activity with bug stamps and markers. 10 of Luke and Jasper's two and three-year-old friends came with their parents and scribbled on blank puzzles and tried to bust open the piñata (we ended up having to cut it!). It was pretty cute. The fourth birthday was basically a repeat without consequence, but when it came time to plan their fifth birthday party, I did not feel inspired.
The image of a dozen five-year-olds racing through the house just wasn't very appealing, and I had clued in to the fact that the kids' previous birthday parties had both proven to be breeding grounds for the dreaded pukey bug (I am not really a germaphobe except for when it comes to the vomit-inducing illnesses in which case I am incredibly OCD and paranoid and will go to great lengths to avoid coming into contact with potentially infectious people. We all (Lena, Luke, Jaz and I) had Rotavirus when the twins were 13 months old and it left me permanently traumatized).
So we decided not to do a kid birthday party, and instead we had some family and family friends over for dinner and birthday cake, and told the boys that maybe we'd have a kid party in the summer (but, um, somehow we never got around to it). This year, living in a much smaller house, we felt clear that we would again forego the traditional birthday party. We planned to have the boys each invite one classmate to go to the Children's Museum and then out to ice cream, but then our friend mentioned that the last time she'd been to the museum, it had smelled like vomit, so that plan was immediately abandoned. Instead, we ended up doing what we did last year, and inviting family and some family friends over for dinner and birthday cake (and again telling the kids that maybe we'll have a kid-party this summer . . . maybe).
I made up a quadruple batch of pizza dough to feed everyone. We didn't have a bowl quite large enough to accommodate all of that rising dough, so this is what happened:
overflowing pizza dough
a monkey cake for Lukas
a puppy cake for Jasper
the inside layers of Jasper's cake
the first of 10 clues
Jaz loving his quilt 
Luke loving his quilt 
the two quilts hanging together
the daily message in Luke's classroom
Luke enjoying his birthday popsicle
the daily message in Jasper's classroom
Jaz blowing out 6 candles in front of his classI'm still adjusting to the idea of having six-year-olds, but I'm very optimistic about what this year of mothering will entail. I'm really liking Luke and Jaz these days, which--shocking as it may sound--is not always a given, and I feel like we're entering a new era of having more reasonable, more consicientous, less self-centered and more aware children. Bring it on.
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3 comments:
Sounds like a beautiful day and the quilts are amazing!
Your Mom does do birthdays like a champ, but I think her Halloween skills are equally shiny. Plus she does a mean braid (maybe if Luke does end up growing his hair long she can get back in the swing, post hosh-wosh tonosh...). xo
How lovely! Growing up my mom made me homemade pinatas for my birthdays, too - and the first year she did it she over did the paper mache layers and ended up having to cut it open, too :)
I found your blog on my computer. Someone in my family loves it. So I sometimes check it out. I was struck hard by the picture of you two with your son in his kindergarten class on his 6th birthday. I felt a sense of envy at first, followed by a sense of pride of sorts. I was once a mother in a classroom in that valley with a 6 year old. He is now 40. My experience was quite different. But more on that in a bit.
I was reminded of something that has been said by a few lately in this health care debate that is going on, 'We have to do it so those who come after don't.' The assumption that those who come after will be busy working on other things.
Let me introduce myself. I will be 60 next week. I believe you live in or are moving into Northampton. I lived there in the early 70's. I was one of the first hippie parents who moved into town and began to live an alternative life there. We slowly drew more of a crowd as we created one alternative institution after another, a book store, a food coop, a free school, a free store, a health care collective, an auto repair collective. Of course they are all gone now. And this is as it should be. Time moves on constantly.
But I have to say to see two women parenting together, married to boot sitting in their son's kindergarten class was a real blast to me. I felt the envy that could only be felt by one who was an outcast by the powers that were back then in N'ton and the valley.
To see that 40 years later women who look so much, so achingly much like I looked back then, and lesbians on top of it to be so welcomed in a public school classroom brought a surge of pride for me. Me and my 6 year old were so made to feel less than, poor, not good enough when we arrived in the schools. Hence our need to create so many alternative institutions. The social world has changed, and changed for the better.
I often wonder, if you and your cohorts know how it got to be that you could live such a free and open life? You must, but at times it feels from this place that you younger women don't know how hard we older people worked to make a town and a world for you that is so welcoming of diversity that is beyond what we could ever have imagined back in 1972.
Perhaps this is because the baby boomers are in so many ways one of the easiest punching bags for society now. We settled for an easy life. Yes we did, but not before putting in a good decade or two fighting in the trenches for the kinds of freedoms that we all live with now.
I feel passion when I send this post out to the oblivion of the internet, but pride too. Pride for you and your family, pride for me and my cohort who first found that valley and reformed it, while others like us were doing the same thing across the nation.
We did a lot. We worked hard against hard odds. You are living in the riches of the freedom that we saw, but didn't quite see either. I am glad for you and I am glad for me.
And as also a mother of 4, I know that the days are not all bliss and difficulties arise with more frequency than you may like, but you are doing a great job and your boys will grow up well and ready to take their rightful
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