A Curious Birthday
Usually it’s great having a child who likes everything. He’s almost always excited, and it’s very easy to make him happy. The downside, though, is it’s hard to figure out what he likes. Obviously the answer is everything, but when you’re trying to buy him a present, or pick a birthday theme, “everything” isn’t the most helpful answer. Add in the complication of trying to make sure it’s something that he likes, and not something he’s just copying from his brother, and we were coming up pretty empty.
Sure, the obvious answer was probably “baa baas,” but that already takes up enough space in his life. He was a lamb for Halloween, and one of his birthday presents was literally a box full of lamb stuffed animals. As much as I love that they make him happy, I want him to be more than that. (And this is coming from someone who also dressed up as a lamb one Halloween, and also had a lamb themed birthday party… go figure).
So we picked a sort of random theme - Curious George. He does love the movie (it’s one of the few he’ll sit through) and it involves the man who wears all yellow, and bananas - two other things he loves. I never got an answer when I asked him for birthday themes, but he didn’t seem unhappy with this as a choice, so we went with it.
On the day of his birthday I told everyone that I wasn’t baking a cake that day. I was exhausted, and it was going to be too much. We had balloons on the tree and lots of presents, and we would do a bigger celebration the next week. It makes sense, I told everyone. So we woke G up and sang him “Happy Birthday” - much to his disappointment - that kid takes forever to wake up, and the last thing he wants are people singing to him while he’s doing it. So we left him alone so he could quietly get ready for the day, and when he finally came down stairs, he ran up to me. “Mama, where’s my birthday?? But where’s my cake??” he asked me. I tried to explain to him what I had told everyone else. It was still his birthday, and we’d celebrate, but no cake today, I said.
And how long do you think that lasted, as I looked at that big beautiful eyes all sad looking back at me? And so I baked a monkey cake during nap time, because I’m crazy, but also because my baby deserves cake on his third birthday. And we did celebrate him a week later too. The kid’s best friends came over and they got to play and eat more cake (cupcakes this time). He still refused anyone singing to him, but I think he had fun.