There are definitely some areas that this mama could have tried a little bit harder at. When I was a youngster, I remember taking note of how certain parts of the year were not the best times for birthdays. For example, Steph’s birthday is often on Thanksgiving Day and that did not set up the scene for a very well attended party. I seem to vaguely recall a friend, Shannon, having her birthday in mid December, but see how I said it was a vague memory? Because it was ( I think) caught amongst all the Christmas hustle and bustle, I don’t remember even one of her birthday celebrations. Poppy’s birthday is January 3rd and that date was also noted in my journal of bad birthdates because it was often the first day back to school after Christmas. That and it was so close to Christmas that people were either unavailable, forgot, or just too partied out to feel up to much celebration. Summer time also seemed a little sketchy in my book, with the whole not being able to take cupcakes to school element. I remember being very vocal about these not being good times to have a birthday and as I got older and understood how one could possibly do some planning and maneuvering to make sure that their own children had a good, solid birthdate, I think I was even more appalled that these undesirable birthdates happened at all. Parents should know better.
Then I became pregnant
Her due date was February 5th or 8th, I don’t quite remember and it really doesn’t matter because she and I both knew that wasn’t ever going to happen. She would be a January baby, right there on the border line of the undesirable birthdates. What had I just done to this poor child? My plan had always been early summer, late spring babies – maybe even mid August to early September – that way the joy, and often times gifts that come with them, of birthdays would be spread out. At least I knew I hadn’t planned it this way. So that was my first parenting obligation to Mattie Belle and I failed it big time.
Kid number 2 had that summer birthday, but he got the month when about 50% of the rest of my family also has their birthday. He is also nearly on the 4th of July which means that he doesn’t get a birthday party until the Sunday before school starts because everyone (including us often times) is out vacationing. Again, I probably could have tried a little bit harder on that one, however, he was supposed to come 3 weeks later so part of it is his fault.
Both of these birthdates are not so hot, but could definitely be worse. They could also be way better, but I am trying to be an optimist here. So when we started entertaining the idea of a 3rd kiddo, I should have looked at this as an opportunity to redeem myself, to make up for the other less than ideal birthdates and give this kid an awesome date – like late September or April (probably 2 of the best months possible for a birthday). I would love to say that I nailed it.
But that would be a lie.
Instead, I did probably my worst job yet.
Poor kid had the exact same due date as Mattie – which though it was in February, we all knew she would be born in January. And at the rate that I was going, it would probably be on Mattie’s same birthday, which would be really funny and ironic and movie-like for about 5 minutes. Lila started considering her arrival long before January, not really committing, just considering it. And when the week of and then the day of Mattie’s birthday arrived, I did everything but pray and fast (definitely did the praying but not so much the fasting because a pregnant girl has got to eat!) to keep her in place for the next 24 hours. And like a good girl, she stayed put……for exactly one more week.
Mama really should have tried harder…..two kids within a week of each other……in the month just off of Christmas…..that’s just downright foolish. And every year come January 5th or 6th or so, right after I realize I forgot Poppy’s birthday, I start fretting about planning for the girls. There are always two separate parties, a week apart. Mattie’s is usually Saturday night, and Lila gets Sunday morning – right before the SuperBowl….again, very poor planning on my end, I realize this. I try to start planning months ahead so that I at least have a game plan, maybe I can even start organizing things ahead of time…colelcting props if they might be needed or purchasing things that I might not be able to find when the event actually arrives.
Mattie’s theme this year was books, because that’s about her most treasured possession and past time these days. I googled “book” themed parties and they were all darling, but based more on baby showers where the guests were to bring children’s books to outfit a newborns first library. The decorations, food ideas and most of the favors weren’t really going to cut it. I decided gummy worms in plastic bags tied with cute string would be “bookworms” and we decorated the table with piles of books tied with bright ribbon and last hung a banner from all 4 corners of the room that consisted of those paper straws strung on a thick string with colored, blank cards stuffed with a blank sheet of paper to look like pages. It was nothing magazine worthy, but it was still pretty cute and I think it got the point across that the girl liked books and reading. She and I were planning to make a cake together, but that was before our dog decided to up and die on us. Friday afternoon, when neither one of us really felt much like going home and baking a cake, we made a spur of the moment decision to just order a cake from our favorite bakery in town, Muddy’s. It was nothing exciting – just a lemon cake (called the Pucker Up) with pale yellow frosting and a few little white sprinkles. Instead of “Happy Birthday” she went with her monogram in the center. She is, after all, my child. Her daddy made a thrown together chili that we really weren’t sure what all the ingredients were, the kids played outside in the dark on our old hammock, we killed that lemon cake, and then to close things out, Mattie turned on a lively World War II based movie called “The Book Thief”. I carried that whole love of reading theme, yes but I think maybe next time she could find something or someway of closing out her party that was a little less heavy.
Mattie Belle Baughman
Gathering to sing to the birthday girl
The giant light in the middle of the room kind of ruins the effect
Happy Decade of Mattie
Bookworms
Kiddos also received their own little journal to encourage them to write their own story. I
People left our house in tears.
Happy turning 10!
On a happier note though, as her birthday gift Mattie asked her partygoers to bring donations, for her to help fund a little girl over in a poor African village to go to school for a year……to learn to read of course…..instead of presents for her. Thanks to our precious friends, Mattie will be able to send two little girls this year and is beside herself with happiness. We have been having the kids pick a cause or charity or something that would do for others for their birthday gift over the past few years rather than doing the whole gift thing for themselves. Mainly, Brandon and I want to teach the kids that birthdays are a celebration of life, of getting to be on this earth for another year – that is your gift – and that we need to take this opportunity to do something good for the world that we live in, to give back. Not that we don’t enjoy gifts, and also giving them, put we just want the kids to understand that this isn’t just another time to say “I want, I want, I want”. They usually get whatever it is they could possibly want, thanks to their doting grandparents and other family, this is just a fun way to feel like they are helping the world around them.
And as her gift from her dad and I, Brandon and I secretly redecorated Mattie’s room to look like much more of a young adult’s room as opposed to the “baby room” as she had taken to calling it. Her room really hadn’t changed much since she first got her bed. A few new knickknacks had settled in and she had a whole library of books, but for the most part it looked just like it did when she was 3. Under the ruse of thinking that we were doing something with the air ducts in her room, Mattie lived downstairs for about 3 nights while Brandon and I worked frantically on this silly room which seemed to fall apart on us every night. First our rug was too small, after we searched all over to find one that matched and we liked and that wasn’t a small fortune. Then we made the horrible discovery that the sheets I had ordered months ago didn’t match the duvet cover at all. Our nights seemed to be filled with trying to put the puzzle together while the days were spent going back and forth to stores returning all the pieces that didn’t fit….sometimes multiple times.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After – she was thrilled by her little couch area and we left the wall relatively empty for her to fill with her own treasures
Before
After
After
I had no intentions of making the room the least bit nautical, but somehow that whale slipped in there and it fits perfectly – it’s my way of reminding her that mom is always with her and knows everything
I don’t think we had any intentions to, but this experience definitely settled any questions Brandon and I might be having on whether or not we should up and become young girls’ room decorators. I am quite certain that is not our calling. We made it work this time, but never again…..not even for Lila…..she is out of luck.
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I really felt like Lila’s birthday party was going to be easy peasy. I purchased a few items for it back when we were working on Mattie’s room and then I just sort of put it on the back burner. Actually, I took it completely off the stove all together. It was going to be so easy and come together without any problems I really didn’t feel any pressure at all. And then Mattie’s room became a crazy, hairy deal and the Crosby of it all, and I’ll be really honest here, at that point I think I just forgot that the other kid was even having a birthday. But Thursday snuck up on me and I rolled out of my fog just in time to remember that I had company coming over on Sunday so I better be prepared.
Lila’s theme this year was chickens. I call the kids (in the most affectionate way possible) my chickens. I’m not really sure how that term of endearment came to be, but they know it means that I love them and they respond to it so we are just going with it. The plan was for us to decorate in chickens and eggs, to serve fried chicken (because Memphis knows its fried chicken probably as well as it is acquainted with bbq) veggie chicken nuggets, beans, cole slaw and corn and top it all off with a chicken cake. The girl really wouldn’t be getting much else for her birthday(because what does a 3-year-old in a house with 2 other kids who already have it pretty well stocked possibly need?), but she would be getting an actual hen shaped birthday cake.
I have to say, I loved probably as much and the birthday kid did
Chicken close-up
Three and chickens
And for her birthday gift, Lila was hoping for donations so that she could send the gift of chickens through World Vision. They actually send out a catalogue at Christmas time of things that you can buy for these people in need, things like mosquito nets and fresh water, bicycles, sending a little girl to school…….and chickens. Turns out chickens can turn a family’s life around, providing them with food to eat (the eggs and the chickens themselves) and they can also make quite a nice little profit from the eggs that the hens lay. And thanks to the generosity of our friends, Lila will be sending 24 families their own little brood.
We ate a fantastic pre- Super Bowl fest, played some egg-based relay games, dined on poultry shaped desserts and then threw eggs at a chalk drawing of a hen and eggs on our backyard fence. You’ve not really been to a party until you are actually encouraged to throw eggs at their property.
I look so pained passing out spoons….who knew?
Uncle Chris the videographer
So what if I’m a foot shorter than everyone else here, it’s my party and i’m gonna play the games
Practicing
Cheesin with her chicken cake
The sole casualty of our egg relay
We would have spanked the kids Shannie had we actually competed against them.
I was trying to talk and hold that silly spoon/ egg combo
All disagreements in our house will now be settled with an egg on a spoon relay
The Birthday Girl was not going to miss out on her turn
Here are all our eggs shells
You can get an idea of the roughly drawn chalk fence chicken
Making her first birthday wish, I don’t think she really knew what was going on in the years passed
I love my girls and I love celebrating their arrivals into this world……but I also love when February rolls around and I know that I don’t have to do it again for a very long time.
I also think the neighbors will appreciate us not having a huge gathering this weekend, though they have probably grown used to it by now. To any neighbors who may be reading this, “We are done until at least April Dear Kirby Woods Residents.”
Mama Tried 