Birthday season: recap

And it’s done. Birthday season is officially over.

The day after baby boy’s party I woke up feeling like something was missing. No more party to plan. No more decorations to make. No more daydreaming and pinning and pining over what to do, how to make it all come together, what activity to plan for the kids, what menu to plan for the adults. No more tissue paper pom poms. No more cutting leaves out of construction paper to dangle from my ceiling.

 

The morning after, I felt like I had uncovered a treasure trove of time. What would I do with myself now, with no party to plan?

But that’s the funny thing about birthday season. It swoops in, pushes other things out of the way, displaces normal life. So that, once it’s over, I don’t have heaps more time. I just have my normal time and my normal life back. I have time to linger over coffee in the morning or relax a bit more and watch TV at night. I have time to take mid-afternoon walks with my boy rather than rushing to the craft store or the party supply store. I have time to work on all of the ideas that bounce around my head but don’t involve tissue paper or streamers or balloons.

I have time for normal life again.

Yes, now I am enjoying the calm after the birthday season. Life feels blissfully normal.

And yet, I can’t stop my mind from spinning up next year’s celebrations either. And what kinds of parties can we have between now and then? A North Pole party? Valentine’s day cookie party? Welcome spring?

After birthday season, I have parties on the brain.

I didn’t plan for my children’s birthdays to fall a month apart. You can’t plan that kind of thing, of course, and I don’t think I would have if I could have. But I do love how we have this one time of year. Two months of balloons and ribbons and excitement and family and friends. And cupcakes. So many cupcakes.

I love giving up two months of my life to celebrate the days that I met my children for the very first time. Those days are so special to me. Life changing in a way that nothing else in my life will be. Beautiful and sweet and tender. Magical, even. And I want us all to feel that all the time but especially on their days. And I want them to be surrounded with family and friends. Because their births were so very private but their lives no longer are and they are both so loved. And now, my girl, she knows that birthdays are big. Birthdays are hours and hours across weeks, carefully designing invitations and crafting decorations and planning menus. And then, birthdays are that special buzz in our house as the hour of guests-arriving approaches. Birthdays are no naps because it’s all too exciting and our house full of people who smile and hug and dance and play. Birthdays are big.

So big we dedicate a whole season to them.

I love that this is how we roll.