Today the Adorable Boy turns 5. His golden birthday: 5 on the 5th.
When he woke up this morning, he found the kitchen decorated with balloons and signs and presents galore from Greenbean (my mom), Mommom and Poppop and the three of us. His sister and I stayed up late to decorate the house and bake a dozen chocolate cupcakes so he could blow out one candle this morning before school. (This was very important to him.)
He was beyond excited about the whole thing, and I caught some of the cuteness on camera:
But behind the scenes, it's been a bit stressful trying to celebrate a birthday while living abroad.
Birthdays are a big deal in our house. We love to celebrate, and we embrace any excuse for a party. Since the kids were babies, we've thrown giant bashes at the house, inviting kids from school, neighbors, coworkers, family, friends, friends of friends, anybody we think might enjoy the day.
We (especially me) love hosting events and being good to our guests. It was always a really important part of our life in Northern Virginia.
And we had some great parties: a Harry Potter-themed 7th birthday for the Adorable Girl, complete with appearances by Hagrid, McGonagall, Professor Trelawney and Mrs. Weasley; no fewer than three Spiderman-themed parties for the boy. Heck, I even threw myself a party for the last birthday I will ever celebrate -- 18, which I turned last year ;)
So contrast that with trying to celebrate a birthday -- and a pretty important one -- while we're a 20-hour flight from pretty much everyone we know. It's a little hard. And, because I'm such a sucker for birthdays (and legitimately crazy), I've been worrying about it pretty much non-stop for two months.
I've been plotting ways for the boy to make friends with the sole purpose of inviting them to his birthday. I asked the Adorable Girl to ask her girlfriends if they'd like to come for a party -- or if they had a little brother that could. I put Shane on task to find people with kids at his office, and he probably freaked everyone out by asking near-strangers if they had any little boys that could come over to play. I heard the neighbor kids riding bikes outside one day and forced my kids to go out and meet them to see if they were prospects. (They were very nice runny-nosed little girls who didn't really impress the boy.)
So I struck out on all fronts.
A woman at Shane's office, who overheard him enlisting kids for the party, very nicely told him that most parents wait a few weeks to celebrate the 5th birthday, as most kids don't start school until they turn 5.
That took some of the pressure off, and the boy seemed to understand why we would be waiting to throw the big bash he's come to expect -- if it happens at all.
And in the meanwhile, we did our best to shower him with love and way too many presents, just the three of us, today. Of course, he didn't mind a lick that he didn't get the big party we've had in years past, especially after opening a set of boxing robots, a dinosaur village with 125 pieces and an ice cream truck replica.
The point of this story (as you've probably figured out) is that the birthday party doesn't really matter to the boy. It matters to me, of course. And I'm missing it for reasons beyond my love of having a pack of wild kids pester the dog and tramp icing through my carpet.
The birthday is a reminder of what we left behind -- the community we built and fostered over the years.
Each fall, I could count on seeing the folks who supported us in our journey through parenthood and beyond. Old teachers and babysitters, college friends, aunts and uncles, fellow moms and dads who had been in the trenches with us. Sometimes, we would only see these people once or twice a year, always catching up over a piece of cake.
It was a way to mark another year survived -- thrived -- and pat each other on the back. We're all doing OK. The kids are just fine.
It's hard to not have that today. I miss it. But I know we will find that support here, eventually. And in the meanwhile, I can call home and connect with those folks I could count on to dress up like a Harry Potter character just to make a 7-year-old smile.
And if that doesn't cheer me up, a two-hour marathon of selling fake ice cream to fake dinosaurs ought to do it ;)
