Last weekend, my son had two birthday parties. Two 1 year olds in one weekend and it was exhausting. My experience after the second party however makes me feel like I'm not alone. I will explain later.
The first of the two parties was in a scout hut, a free for all for all kids and a standard party of food and music with scattered toys for different ages and a bouncy castle. However, it was in the middle of the day and by that I mean while my son would usually be napping. The kids there ranged from a couple of months to pre-teens. My friend did the best she could with that situation, she also catered for me and my sister with tons of dairy free food so I shouldn't complain. My son however, spent the entire time we were there trying to escape and edging towards the door when he thought people weren't looking. They say your children can sense how you are feeling and I feel badly that he may have been acting out how I was feeling but it just wasn't our kind of thing, we promptly left and my son was grouchy for the rest of the afternoon having had only 20 minutes of nap on the way there and basically very little to eat.
The following day, the party was held at a local soft play space. It was about the size of a small shop and it was perfect and safe and had just the right amount of climbing things to keep my son occupied and there were soft mats everywhere. The place looked like it was made for my son. It was at a very sociable 10.30am and everything was done by 12.30pm. The play was broken up by singing in a circle and pretending they were animals of different sorts with a lot of encouragement on imaginative play. Then after sandwiches, they all went back to play again for another 30 minutes before singing happy birthday and then we all left. My son again ate nothing but he walked out and said, "Mummy, my had fun". My heart melted. That's all I can ask for, I know fun doesn't feed him but I loved that he enjoyed himself. We took him to the local supermarket to get something quick to eat and he started to fall asleep in the trolley (we have to get a trolley otherwise he gets annoyed even if it's for two things - this is a different story). I did have to wake him to feed him but afterwards he had a lovely long nap and woke up refreshed and happy. Perfect.
Now, the supermarket trip was lovely for two reasons. One, my son falling asleep in a trolley is really sweet, he must have been so tired! Two, the trip back to the car. At supermarkets there are usually many parent and child car spaces. Usually you don't really see the other parents as they are literally just taking their child out or putting their child in the car so you don't pay attention. At the party, only the children were catered for so when we went to the supermarket we got sandwiches for myself and my husband too to eat in the car. While I was finishing feeding my son in the trolley by our car, there was a mother who had clearly bought a train set, wrapping paper and tape from the supermarket and was wrapping said train set on the bonnet of her car while her husband entertained their children. Queue another family who were walking back to their car. A husband, wife and their two kids who had obviously been winding up their mother something rotten and the dad was doing his best to keep things calm. He looked over at my son sitting quietly in the trolley with a full mouth and smiled at him. I looked over at the mum and smiled at her because who hasn't had a day like that. When I had loaded my son into his car seat and sat down to start my sandwich, I said to my husband, "that poor mum, she looked so tired", he responded with, "well she must be to have come to the supermarket in her slippers". I hadn't even noticed. If I could genuinely pull this off, I would have done it many times too. Those two women represent two parts of me that are a constant struggle I imagine for most mums if not some dads too. Trying to stay on top of everything all of the time is so very very hard. I couldn't help but smile to myself because we're all in the same boat, every day isn't a pipe dream and I wish that sometimes it were a little easier but then it wouldn't be so rewarding if parenting was easy.
~AB~
