A Lonely Birthday.

My boy is now 7. Just seems like yesterday that I rolled over in bed, felt wetness and was hoping that I'd only peed myself and that wasn't my water breaking. But it was the later and after a night of no sleep and a day of drug enhanced labor the munchkin made a very quiet first appearance.

So birthday time. I decided not to have a big party for him this year for 2 reasons: I'm not up for it with everything else going on, and he couldn't come up with a list of who he'd invite. We offered a trip to the zoo who were holding a luau party. I even tried to invite the one child the boy mentioned, but they never got in touch with me. I had even made sure to speak to them at back to school night. I thought I'd gotten a funny reaction and I guess I was right since they never called. Telling him no party wasn't the easiest part. When faced with just the family outing the boy was horrified - "but that will be a lonely birthday".

Fast forward to now.

He hasn't been saying anything about his birthday. Then Saturday he gets his card from Grandma. She has enclosed a very generous check. The boy, when he understands the value of the enclosed check, becomes VERY excited. We have him call to thank his Grandma. "Grandma", he says, "you know that paycheck you sent me? I can get a lot of stuff with that paycheck." He then outlined what he was thinking of buying. Eventually remembering that the whole point was to say thank you.

At dinner we mentioned the next day's trip to the zoo. "Noo" he wailed, "I didn't want to do that". After some minor negotiations, he relented. How do you say to a child I invited your friend but his mother snubbed me. Worst part is that if he'd chosen any of 3 or 4 other kids he knows I would already have known their moms. We left it at "Drew couldn't come".

I started baking his birthday cake. Marble in 2 layers. "Look at those pies" he said. "They're your cake" I countered. "Both of them?" "I'm going to put one on top of the other with icing in the middle." And he danced.

We had a nice little pile of presents for him and a cake with his name on it. We went to the zoo and ate lunch at the luau, rode the virtual surf machine and looked at the animals. We bought ice cream from the vending machines, and took a ride on the train. I even gave him quarters for the binocular machine. At the gift shop he decreed we should have souveniers for everyone and selected a large stuffed snake for himself. And somewhere between the train ride and the gift shop he decided that this was a pretty good birthday after all. So we went home and had mac & cheese for dinner and then we ate cake.