It was supposed to be a quiet occasion. “We’ll have just the Grandparents and Godparents over and just have a cake to mark the day”. It sounded so straightforward, I mean, they are only two and have no idea what day their birthday is. Then you start to think about it and realise that Godparents includes partners and offspring, so we were quickly up to nineteen.
Nineteen people and only one other child their age to celebrate with them. Luckily, we have lots of friends with young children. Hannah’s brother has a daughter who will be three in December so we asked her over. We invited one of the girls from Hannah’s basketball team and her daughter that will be two in a few weeks. It would be rude not to invite since her mother has promised her hand in marriage to one of our boys. We haven’t decided which one, it seemed arranging her marriage when she was only a few months old was restrictive enough without narrowing it down further. While we were thinking marriage prospects we invited the girl next door. It only becomes a cliché if there is something to it. Then we invited a few others that don’t get mentioned specifically because we haven’t planned their wedding and before we knew it our quiet occasion had a guest list of about 40 men, women and children.
We had a cast of thousands, a miniature bouncy castle and enough junk food to get all of China on a sugar rush. Time to party like a toddler!!
It was a great day. The forecast was for unseasonable sunshine and it wasn’t as good as advertised but you can’t be unhappy with getting a dry day in October. I would hate to think what it would have been like if we weren’t able to open the back doors and let them play outside.
I had such great intentions of taking notes and writing a really detailed and hilarious post but I got caught up in the mayhem and you are stuck with this drivel instead. It was a blur and I only remember bits of it.
I remember that the boys got over their fear of bouncy castles and I had to pull them out of a tangle of juvenile limbs. I remember that the boy from next door tried to channel the spirit of Evel Kenieval, on a toy motorbike belonging to Fat Chops, and thumped his head off the decking after overcooking a wheelie. I saw one of the girls fall off the decking and I have a great mental image of her little legs sticking out a bush and no other evidence that a child was in there. I remember that the Drama Queen asked where we got our sofa from and then disappeared off to Ikea leaving her four kids in our house, cheek! I remember sitting all the toddlers at a table, piling it high with sweets and watching them make it all disappear. Then it was a case of lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out and finally cutting the cake.
After that, people started trickling out – most of them had the decency to bring their kids with them [yes DQ, I’m holding a grudge!]. Slowly, the house became quieter, the kids came down off the sugar rush and we swept all the debris into a couple of black sacks. We put the boys to bed, ordered a takeaway, turned on the X-Factor and started drinking heavily.
It was only the next day that we were able to take stock of how generous people had been. We tried to use the “your presence is present enough” tactic but failed miserably. Everyone agrees with the theory that there is no point buying a lot of stuff for two year olds who don’t understand what a birthday is. It is always overridden by the fear of being the only person who turns up empty handed. Needless to say the boys acquired a new winter wardrobe and a whole bunch of new toys.
The pick of the bunch was a couple of personal stereo’s from my mother. I’ve written a couple of times about how the boys love to sing and dance. We went down to my mother-in-law’s on Sunday to avoid cleaning up our house. We went and got them a compilation CD of recent hits that they sing along to in the car and plugged them in. The stereo hangs on a belt over one shoulder, there are big, gaudy headphones and a silver microphone attached. Not being able to hear what the boys are listening to only enhances the experience. They strutted around, they struck poses, they danced and they sang their hearts out. Most of all, they completely overshadowed X-Factor. Great fun!
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