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| Tomorrow’s Post will be the HOW-TO of these Pretty Babies! |
It’s been about a year since we had a DIY [Do It Yourself] Birthday party in our home. April marked the beginning of birthday season in the Paulus household, but we celebrated Princess #2 in Atlanta during Spring Break. Now that Princess #4 is old enough to know Birthday and Party go together, I know I can’t hoodwink my way through June with the “Family” party. Not when the invitations began rolling in for all her friends’ parties this year. Not that I’m the type of mom who plays the “have to keep up with the Jones'” game, but I do believe in social conformity for the sake of community participation and investing in relationships. I genuinely enjoy having people over at the house, but occasionally I get overwhelmed with the prep side of things. So I consciously decide to downsize the DIY event to two cool-ish desserts. Two I could handle. I’m pretty sure.
Actually, I only plan to do one. The cake. But as I Google instructions on how to make a “rainbow cake,” a fun rainbow-colored appetizer pops up. I look over to my sixth grader who’s sitting next to me and ask, “Whadya think? Should we try it?”
“Definitely.” Thumbs up from the middle schooler so it’s a go. Jello slices, I think I can manage. And who doesn’t like jello?So come Saturday, the day before the Par-Tay, I spend all morning cleaning up the yard *hubs in on call, that nap time is a’callin when I should really start making the cake. A nap if I take one on the rare occasion equates to ten power minutes of shut-eye.
Hubby walks in from his rounds around noon and sees me headed to the bed, and his immediate response is, “Only one glass of wine for you from now on.”
What?!?
“Look at the yard first.” I pout for emphasis. This exhausted noontime state has nothing (or nearly nothing) to do with those two glasses I had last night. And the third, Dixie cup-sized serving was a complimentary serving from the guy at the bar. He saw our group of ten or so hospital-affiliated diners and sent over a bottle of dessert wine because he knew the doc sitting across from me. Then he came over to say hello and added, “I thought it was a good investment. A table full of doctors. I never know when I might need one of you to take care of me.”
Fun! I thought these things only happened in the movies! Thanks Mr. Stranger at the Bar! I can’t perform any life-saving procedures on you myself, but I’ll gladly give a shout out to you on my Blog. Bottoms up.
So anyway… After my five minutes of horizontal, I venture over to King Kullen to food shop with the birthday Diva, who tries to convince me that candy is a legitimate menu item, crucial to the success of any five year old’s festivities. “Oh look! Organic, natural, sugar-free, dye-free, high-fiber, tastes just like candy, strawberries!”
“That’s not candy, Mom.” Almost five year old is just getting too smart for me. The days of the old distract and dash work no longer. Hmmm.
So we arrive home and it’s four o’clock. Hubby wants to take the family and our visiting friends who have just arrived to an outdoor concert at the Old Westbury Gardens. At six o’clock. The music doesn’t start till 8PM, but the grounds have an Alice in Wonderland feel and the event includes kids’ activities like face painting, prior to the show.
By the time I finish stage one of both rainbow desserts and we all eat dinner, it’s 7:45PM. No pre-game show today. We gather our lawn chairs and drive over the garden and walk through the crowds to find a nice open spot near the rear on the big lawn. The air is full of the scent of … is that wine I smell? Wow. This is not your average outdoor picnic concert. This is fancy. Every few feet, folks have little tables set up with bottles and real wine glasses and cheese and crackers and … I feel under-dressed.
All we brought was a small container of Italian rainbow cookies (these I did not make) and a few peanut butter brownies. And water bottles. And hubby snuck in a few root beers. He’s so rebellious.
The music is just starting, and as I sit down on my pink lawn chair, I turn to my friend Sora and say, “Wow. I feel so cultured.”
She laughs and responds, “Oh, Raj!” I give her many reasons to repeat this throughout the evening. I’m a little rebellious myself. 🙂
The music is Amazing! The band, I mean the Nassau Pops Symphony Orchestra Performing with Bob Merrill and Grammy Award Winning Artist Jimmy Webb, play tunes from Broadway, Billy Joel, Elvis and Sinatra and others. I am totally loving the night.
But the reason we came tonight was two-fold. To enjoy the concert, but also to invest in our friends. You see, they’re about to have their first baby, and they wanted to pick our brains about parenthood, labor and delivery, newborns, etc. Since, well, we’ve been around the block a few times. Four to be exact. And although we do not know everything, we’re a few steps ahead of the soon to be parents, and we were more than happy to share our two cents. Hoping the stories would give the new parents some peace and wisdom and laughs. Because, you have to laugh on the journey of parenthood. You just have to. No kid comes with an instruction manual. And every child is different. And sometimes you want to cry. A lot of times you do cry. So laugh now. While a wailing newborn isn’t keeping you awake all night. Yet.
I never say it aloud while we chat, but as I soak in our surroundings, I think to myself, how perfect. We couldn’t have picked a better place to talk about raising children. In a garden. Where seeds are planted. Flowers grow. Weeding takes a lot of work. And watering and sunshine are essential.
When the kids get antsy with the declining temperature and nipping mosquitoes, we make a joint decision to pack up and call it a night. Hubby’s folding chair refuses to fall nicely into its bag so as I move over to help him, I say strategically, “You know this is gonna cost you, don’t you?”
“What? Five?”
“No. Not that. [What is with guys and their one track minds?] This.” And I place the chair down and wrap my arms around my hubs and coerce him into slow dancing with me. I have no idea what song this is, but I’m in the mood to sway to this tune that seeps lyrically and melodiously into my soul. Twenty seconds is about all I can weasel. No one else is dancing. But it’s so dark and everyone’s facing the stage and we’re nearly at the back of the crowd. Hubs protests. So I let it go. And him. I know he has his limits for PDD [Public Displays of Dance.] Mine has always exceeded his. 🙂
As we begin our migration back to the cars, I notice my oldest does not have her glasses on. “They were on my face. Just a minute ago. I took them off, and now they’re lost. Forever!” She bursts into tears.
Welcome to the world of middle school madness.
We are the only two left as the others speed ahead, and the music is too loud to call anyone back to tell them we need to search a darkened lawn for brown-rimmed specks. A nice gentleman lends us his flashlight and suggests I scan the area like a grid. It often takes a man to come up with a logical plan in the midst of flying female emotions. So I walk up and down, meticulously and slowly, not wanting to find Hannah’s glasses with a crunchy announcement, and after several minutes, I spot them. Barely. But so glad I do.
We thank our Flashlight Friend as we take our Mommy-daughter stroll back to the parking lot, digesting, dissecting and debriefing about the stressful minutes that just passed.
“I ruined the whole night for everyone.” Princess#1 still feels bad.
It couldn’t have helped that I whined earlier about not wanting to leave.
It couldn’t have helped that I whined earlier about not wanting to leave.
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did. I’m cold. Itchy. I made everyone leave early. And I almost lost my glasses.”
“And?”
“Why do I always have to lose things at the worst times?”
“It’s not that serious.”
Silence. I put my arm around her and give her a second and third squeeze. “We all lose things Bubs. You realize that your dad almost left his phone on the grass. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Alex noticing it, he’d be in bigger trouble than you. He’s on call right now.”
“Oh.”
“And, it’s not that serious. Nothing is that serious. Sure I would have wanted to listen to the music longer. Sure I would have wanted to hang out a little more. But you’re miserable right now. So we need to get home. And you know what?”
“What?”
“We’re coming back next year. With long pants. Glow sticks. More snack. And…the point is. Now we know what to expect. And we’ll be better prepared.”
Reminded of how with each daughter born, we knew a little more of what to expect, and although each munchkin has been very different personality-wise from her siblings, the basics of newborn parenting became a little easier with each birth. Experience prepared us part of the way. Grace paved the rest of the way. Still does. Every day.
“Now repeat after me.” I say to my firstborn because I want to make sure she gets it. “Nothing is that serious.“
“Nothing is that serious.”
“You know what I mean right?” Another shoulder squeeze. “A few things in life are serious. Faith, family, friends. Birth. Death. And maybe a few more I forgot to mention. But all in all, nothing is that serious.”
Big sigh. “Okay Mommy.”
From a woman who spends plenty of minutes on the other side of that equation, emotional and reactive to life’s curve balls, I think Hannah knows that I say the words for me too. Perspective. Daily doses. Remind us not to sweat the small stuff. Cuz most of it. Not all of it. But a lot of it. Is the small stuff.
The next day’s party goes off without a glitch. No kids fall from the tree house. No basketballs venture beyond reach of recovery. And hubby doesn’t get stuck in the hospital with admissions. The father got to spend most of Father’s Day with us. Yeah!
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| Come back tomorrow to find out how Barbie Got her Sari Goin’ on! 🙂 |
The jello slices are a hit. The cupcakes not bad. The cake, I have to say, turns out so-so in the taste and visual categories. Not as moist as I had hoped and the icing way too sweet. And Barbie looks more like she’s jumping out of a cake rather than sporting a big poofy dress, the effect I was going for. And the rainbow interior resembles more of a tie-dye shirt than a ribbon in the sky. Oh well.
The kids had fun. The adults had wine. Just kidding. No wine was served.
And Sarah-Beara is officially five and counting. One party down…
**So what about you? Do you have any cool fun party ideas you’d like to share? Or a moment when you had to remind yourself that “nothing is that serious?” Do Share! Do Share!
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