THE BIRTHDAY PARTY THAT ALMOST WASN’T

We had a nice first birthday party planned Saturday for Caroline, right up until the snow started to hit. At that point we started calling anyone coming from outside the immediate area (including my parents and siblings) and told them to stay home. Good thing we did, considering the horrific conditions on the road.

However, with pretty much every other event in the area being canceled or just plain inaccessible, we had a nice turnout from the neighbors. And naturally Caroline wasn’t remotely disappointed, because people say “Happy Birthday” to her and she just says smiles and says “Ma.” (She has three words in her vocabulary: “Ma,” “Mama,” and “Mamamamama.” The first two are directed to Kathleen if Kath is hodling her; the third is what she shouts when she wants Kath to come back into the room. If I’m holding her and say, “Say Dada,” she smiles and then hits me in the face. So I’m taking a different approach and trying to teach her to identify me as “Not the mama.”)

So folks came and Caroline got her own piece of cake which she obligingly smeared all over her face, thus permitting adorable pictures that we can trot out to show her prom date some years hence. That’s part of a parent’s job: Coming up with new and interesting ways to make their children wish they had someone else for parents.

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14 comments on “THE BIRTHDAY PARTY THAT ALMOST WASN’T

  1. Congrats on Caroline’s first birthday Peter. Your daughter and my son share the same birthday (12/5), though he’s a few years older. We actually went thru with our party at an indoor playground in Boston. We finished just as the serious snow started to hit.

  2. Heh, I sooo know the trick of building up ways to embarress the kids when they are older. My eldest daugher Kathryn(7) has just started here first crush on Frankie Muniz of Malcolm In The Middle fame…..can’t wait until that one comes out in the years to come 😀

    Congrats on your young ‘uns first big day.

  3. My eldest daugher Kathryn(7) has just started here first crush on Frankie Muniz of Malcolm In The Middle fame

    A preview of “MitM” ran during The Simpsons tonight, and my first thought on seeing Frankie Muniz was, “what is he now, 26?”

    Probably not the thought you want in conjunction with your daughter, tho’.

  4. I’ve got a picture of my two nieces, circa 7 and 2, in respectively full Batman costume pajamas and full Robin costume pajamas. I refer to this as my “retirement picture”, in that I fully intend to blackmail them with it into supporting me in my dotage.

    Btw, with respect to cake, what you need to remember *not* to do on Caroline’s next birthday is to tell her it’s her cake. On my second birthday, my parents told me it was my cake, so I promptly did a face first header into it; it was mine after all. They made the same mistake the next year, same result. And, of course, each year I did get all the cake. For my 4th birthday, they grabbed it as soon as I blew out the candles and then brought out slices for the party guests.

  5. I’ll always remember the first time my girlfriend saw me naked.

    It was in a picture my father (in a not-so-rare moment of fatherly cruelty) “accidentally” left on the mantle above the fireplace.

    I was 4. I was naked. I was standing on a ladder on the back porch. I was holding a broom.

    She wouldn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes. At least I had a nice butt when I was 4. Still do, actually. hee hee.

  6. Cake pictures are too cute. You get much more mileage out of pictures of potty training. Especially naked potty training. Take the naked potty training picture and put it in your wallet so it’s visible to complete strangers whenever you pay for anything. Your child will find this funny and endearing once they turn 36.

  7. A preview of “MitM” ran during The Simpsons tonight, and my first thought on seeing Frankie Muniz was, “what is he now, 26?”

    Eighteen, actually. Better, but still not good….

  8. I have told my son repeatedly:

    It’s one of my parental duties to embarass you; it’s in the contract.

    He’s fifteen. I was never much for pictures, but there’s always the story about the time he was getting his diaper changed and he peed in Grandma’s tea cup (he was prone at the time).

    Of course, I don’t have to go back that far to embarass him – but I reserve the more recent occasions for actual criticism, as his more recent embarassing moments aren’t so far in the past as to be cute yet (I have doubts that his repeating 7th grade will ever be cute, but that’s another story).

  9. For my 4th birthday, they grabbed it as soon as I blew out the candles and then brought out slices for the party guests.

    Smart parents. My four-year-old, the moment the cake showed up in front of him, did a face-plant and immediately began to gobble the cream flowers on the top…

  10. Be glad her first words were “ma ma”.

    My daughter’s first words were an echo of her daddy’s surprised expression on seeing an unexpected hospital bill for his throat surgery (the insurance screwed things up).

    Nothing like hearing your 6-month old say “holy crap!” (actually, it came out more like “ho-wee cwah”, but it was close enough)

  11. ilove malcolm in the middle but i’m imbarrased to say i have a crush on malcolm.He is so dreamy.

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