We had Nolan's 1st birthday party on Saturday the 10th. I totally jinxed it the weekend before when it was pouring rain by saying "Thank God the party's next weekend and not this weekend," because it of course rained on Saturday.
But it was all right. We did a major cleanup job on the basement (that's our real motivation for having people over every now and then - it forces us to clean up so people don't know we live like slobs) and we had plenty of room for everybody. It was a veritable baby-a-thon. Every single person who came to the party either was a baby or child or had one (or two). There were no childless people to be found. KB even remarked on it - "We've got friends with children, and friends without children, and only the people with children are here."
In some cases, that's the reason we're friends - we met through our children. In other cases, we knew the people before we or they became parents, and we've managed to remain friends. But whatever the case, our social life seems to have definitely shifted gears a wee bit. Sometimes you don't even get to talk to the people you want to talk to - my friend Greg brought his two daughters, Emma, 4, and Margaret, 1 1/2, but apparently Margaret yakked in the car on the way to our house, so they basically just stopped by to say hello and then left again, which was too bad, as I haven't talked to Greg in months and was looking forward to catching up with him. (Emma did have a chance to chase Jake around a bit, though. In fact, Jake was a pretty big hit with the under-five crowd. There were repeated cries of "Keey-kaaat!" and then you'd see a furry black streak rush through the room, trying to escape the toddlers. Lola sensibly retreated to our bedroom and hid under the bed the entire time.)
The best part of the entire party was when we sang Happy Birthday to Nolan. He was totally and completely aware that we were all there singing for him. He got this excellent majestic look on his face like he was forgotten royalty and we were all serfs there to bow and scrape to him; he grinned a big grin and just looked around at his kingdom and took it all in. It was pretty sweet.
Then, of course, came the eating of the cake. Although I have heard from various sources that it is a "tradition" to smush your child's face into his or her birthday cake, I generally frown upon dessert-related violence, so we decided to just serve the cake to Nolan and see what happened:
As you can see, he did all the necessary smushing himself.
Yup, it's official. Now we've got a toddler. Good lord. Thank you, and good night!
Thanks for reading.
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