birthday celebrations

Now I only have myself to blame. I have three children , you think I’d have more sense, but we do tend to throw each child a party for  their birthday. The middle child gets short changed having a birthday in August,  we are often at the seaside. To make up for it last year, she invited a group of girls for an afternoon tea in September.

My youngest had her fifth birthday at a wacky warehouse but previous birthdays  saw me shaking off the January blues and  breaking out in a sweat, cleaning the entire house two weeks after Christmas and decking out the downstairs in a theme of her choosing (pirates and princesses aged 3 and Under the sea aged 4)  We ransacked the costume and set cupboards at school and I begged an art teacher to draw me a pirate for pin- the- parrot- on-the-pirate and a pirate ship, which the children decided to colour in before I got around to pinning the jolly roger on it.

My eldest daughter was told last year , that she was too old for parties. Then I secretly invited five of her friends and a cousin to the bowling alley and pizza place the Saturday before her birthday. A couple of hours before, I bathed all three kids, painted their nails with glitter and put their party dresses and shoes on with a “it’s just nice to dress up sometimes isn’t it?” I actually couldn’t believe they fell for it, it was only daddy who nearly blew it, he was so excited we nearly got there too early and had to side track to Aldi to get a bottle of wine. I am at this point texting everyone to make sure they are there. They were.

We walked through the doors and her friends shouted “surprise!” My beautiful daughter, turned around in panic to see who she was supposed to be shouting “ surprise” at! One of her friends had to explain to her that it was her own party. She loved it, once she got over the shock and I have been smug about it right up until about a week a go when she requested doing the same thing but knowing about it this time. I suddenly thought that she had missed looking forward to her treat. That realisation finally took the shine off my success.

My husband is 50 next week, we are going for a family meal. I didn’t attempt a surprise party. I couldn’t even keep his present a surprise, blurting it out when I thought we had decided on something else, only to find that it would have been a perfectly lovely surprise after all. I do want him to have a really good day, as my memory of his 40^th is that it was over taken by a week old baby, mastitis and baby blues. The hi-light was him taking our screaming infant for a walk while his hormonally deranged wife wept herself to sleep. His birthday tea was interrupted by a trip to the walk in clinic. That’s not the plan this time.