As many of you know, birthdays at our house can sometimes be a little over the top. This is particularly true for birthday years 1-3, the only years thus far that I have been willing to do traditional parties. I found myself in quite a predicament, consequently, when I realized that we were going to be in Boston for Mason's second birthday. I always do a birthday party for my kids' second birthdays. All of the other kids had an amazing second birthday party. Mason absolutely had to have a second birthday party--complete with invitation to place neatly in his special box and photos to be chronically nicely in his photo album. It had to happen. But how? How was I possibly going to pull off a second birthday party when we were going to be all by ourselves in a little house in Boston!? This question stressed me out for months. Would I try to pull the party off early when Nick was out of town? Would we throw the party late and have an already crazy December made all that much crazier? There seemed to be no good option that would let us throw Mase a party, but skipping out on the party was not an option either. I'm kind of an even-steven kind of mom and having baby Mase miss out on one of his parties simply was not okay. Pushing back the Hoskins' birthday party schedule a year so that he could still get all three parties out of us didn't seem like a good idea either though. It was a family crisis. No matter how hard we tried, however, we just couldn't seem to make the party work. So, after months of insanity, I finally gave in and accepted the fact that we weren't going to be able to throw Mason a second birthday party.. It was a hard pill for me to swallow, but after assuring him (and myself) that he would be compensated--and by compensated I mean given an amazing un-birthday party sometime in the Spring--we settled on a nice family party that would be manageable under our limited circumstances. And so, shortly after we arrived in Boston, the big family birthday party was upon us.
The only problem was, the day of Mason's birthday kicked off with a rough start. With the mommy guilt already piled a mile high, it was almost too much when I woke early on the morning of Mason's birthday to find the birthday boy already up and playing on the floor. This is practically against the law at our house. On your birthday, you must sleep in until the whole family arrives in your room with your candle lit breakfast in bed singing "Happy Birthday" in three-part harmony (Yeah right!) and carting in all of your presents caravan-style. I was so shocked when Mason beat me up on the morning of his birthday that I almost didn't know how to proceed. I quickly re-grouped, however, and after rousing the troops, we simply reversed the order of the morning. I stuck the cinamon rolls in the community oven, and we piled up Mason's presents for him to open while his breakfast cooked.
After the present opening, then we presented Mase with his candle-lit breakfast and birthday serenade. Gratefully, he seemed unaware of the mishap.
(Emma wanted a picture with some of Mason's presents too.)
Following breakfast, Mase slipped into the shower for a bit to try out his new bath toys/body wash,
and then the birthday boy kissed his Daddy good-bye (Of course Nick had to go in on his birthday this year!) and sat down to assemble some of his new legos. Later that day, after nap-time, we took a trip to visit Daddy at the hospital. Mason was so pleased when Daddy presented him with a bouquet of birthday balloons, and even more excited that Daddy took him up and down the hospital escalator a hundred and one times.
He was disappointed when we had to leave Daddy "at work", but soon enough evening came and it was time for birthday dinner, and then birthday cake. An integral part of our kids' birthday parties has been their elaborate birthday cakes. As I have confessed on many occasions, I actually hate cake decorating with quite a passion, but I suck it up and pull the all-nighters anyway. For this party, however, I decided we were already breaking from tradition so much that it wouldn't hurt if I shook up the birthday cake notion as well. So, instead of making all of the darling Lightening McQueen Car cakes myself, the kids and I decided that we would divy up the cakes and each family member would get to create their own Cars masterpiece. I still managed to create quite a stunning rendition of Francesco Bernoulli, but thankfully, the others took care of decorating the rest of the car cakes. Here we are going to town on the frosting and sprinkles...
And here are some of the stunning masterpieces we created...
I think it actually worked out to be more fun for everyone to decorate their cakes themselves,
and Mason wisely chose mine as his favorite in the end. Perhaps his had too many sprinkles to be palatable, but whatever his reasons, he happily sunk his birthday teeth into good old Francesco and capped off what worked out to be an alright day after all.
I still feel like we owe him a party in the Spring, but I think this little man took his big day in stride.
Happy Birthday Baby Boy! I can't believe you're two!
Here are a couple of shots from the night before Mason's birthday too. We went to dinner at Boston's famous Bertucci's Italian Brick Oven. Mason enjoyed his complimentary birthday cake, and almost showed us the right number of fingers for the picture. He was at least saying twoooo...
After dinner we went outside and joined the rest of the city in Quincy Market for the Boston Christmas tree lighting celebration. It was slow getting started, but then they got the lights on, the music started, and the fake snow a-blasting. It turned out to be quite fun, and not nearly as crazy as going to the Rochefellar tree lighting in New York City a few years back.
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