I didn't send out birthday invitations for Mac's birthday. This was a first for me, a true motherhood milestone. I wrote "Mac's b-day invites" on my to-do list daily for three weeks. I made a mock up for printing at Walgreen's. I finally printed them out 11 days before the big event. And then forgot to pick them up from Walgreen's and send them out. I picked them up the day before my RSVP deadline, and hand delivered them to family. In a last ditch effort I created an event on Facebook to invite friends at the last minute. And everything about this paragraph kills me.
The thing about this year is that Mommy is learning to juggle her time, and is trying to keep her head above water.
I forgot to order the table, and was lucky enough that the party rental place still had a six foot kids table with chairs available on Tuesday, for our party the following Saturday. I waited until Friday to buy all the food I would need for the party. Of course it rained on Friday and so most of that day was spent planning shopping trips around rain and wind. Thankfully I had bought all the goody bag stuffers and plastic eggs and candy two weeks before Easter and so I didn't miss anything, but I still had no back up plan in the event that it would rain on Saturday too. I bought clearance Easter crafts and photo booth props for a dollar fifty each. The only perk to my procrastination.
The thing about this year was that I didn't have time to think about crafts or Pinterest inspired parties or any of the things that Mac wanted at her Easter Tea Party birthday party, the week after Easter. Which seemed that it would be so easy at the time, but managed to be panic inducing by Friday night.
As with previous years, I waited until the last minute to buy the birthday girl her presents. There I was on Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon, staring at the empty shelves in the Disney Princess aisle. No Anna to be found. A few years ago this would have reduced me to tears, but Friday? Nah. Friday I just moved right along to some other toy that she has asked for a million times, and I've always found a million excuses why we can't get it. So I bought it and a few others.
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| This picture was taken and used on Mac's 4th Birthday Invitations. The Invitations that are still sitting on my desk. |
The one thing that Mommy actually did right was make strawberry cupcakes. Per the birthday girl they were to be strawberry cake with strawberry frosting with a strawberry on top. Easy enough, this was the only Pin I actually delivered on. Until Saturday morning when I frosted the cupcakes with canned vanilla frosting and the birthday girl said that I did them wrong and that she wouldn't eat them.
The thing about this year is that Mommy bought a back up cake. A chocolate, store bought one to be exact, because she did not want to make a horrible cake that Pinterest deemed delicious. And also because people are always happy when chocolate cake is served.
And none of these things mattered, because on Saturday we celebrated Mac. With cinnamon rolls for breakfast and cakes for lunch. We ordered pizzas and used enough paper products to make an eco blogger live in a tree to save it's life. We drank sodas and drank pink tea out of mismatched tea sets that I pulled from the girls toy boxes. Because kids don't care if the cups and saucers match. Kids only care about cake and ice cream.
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| The only picture of our party set up. Pretty cute right? |
The thing about this year is that it broke my heart not to be able to handle this party with kid gloves. I worried and stress ate for days. But the thing about this year is that no matter how off balance we are, not matter how stressed or disorganized our lives, we make it work. We move right along. And this birthday was the epitome of make it work. The birthday girl refused pictures in her birthday dress, and would only eat cake if we promised not to sing the birthday song. I didn't get a single picture of the cake or the cupcakes or the tea party with her friends. I didn't even get pictures of her opening her gifts. We did fit in the Easter Egg hunt, and thankfully the weather cooperated. So while it wasn't the day that I planned, the day went exactly as planned.
Because the thing about this year was that it's really hard to mess up a plan, when there isn't one.
