A Guilt-Driven 10 Year Old Birthday Celebration

This Saturday, Bean turned 10 years old. Ten. As in, two hands of fingers. As in double digits. As in, according to my high school English teacher, Mr. King, I no longer have to spell out his age (three, four, five, etc.) and can now simple use numbers. As in, I have been a parent for a decade, people. A DECADE.

As in, some of you have been reading about my family for a decade. Let that one sink in for a minute. WE OLD, IMAGINARY FRIENDS. We so old.

On his actual birthday, we celebrated pretty low key. Because it was his birthday and Bean ruled all on Saturday, we had to get up when he got up to open presents, which was, like, ass-crack of dawn thirty. He got some really great presents from everyone. Chris and I gave him the Hogwarts Great Hall Lego set, a Lego race car, and a set of laser tag guns that he asked for. From family, he also got a few more Lego sets, Lego PS4 games “Jurassic World” and “Incredibles 2,” the Smart Games Asteroid Escapea, a Perplexus Epic puzzle ball, and a remote control glider airplane.

After his birthday breakfast and presents, we hung around the house for the morning playing with his new toys and then headed out in the afternoon to see “Aladdin” (really good, btw!). Then, we came home and had dinner and cake with Nana. It was a really great day, but we were resting up for his birthday celebration with friends on Sunday.

Back in April, we spent a Saturday morning laying on the couch, leisurely planning out Bean’s birthday party. Like the put-together and always-on-top-of-things mother I like to pretend to sometimes be, I patted myself on the back for having the foresight to think ahead for planning because Bean’s birthday always falls in the last week of school, which is just chaos ’round these parts. Yes, planning the birthday party ahead of time was definitely the responsible, rockstar parenting thing to do.

So, we have this great conversation about what kind of party he wants and who all he wants to invite and then I very promptly forgot the entire conversation in about an hour and never once thought about it again until this past Monday when I was a thousand miles away on business and the 4:00am guilt monster reared it’s ugly head to remind me that I am a terrible mother who has forsaken her children for a paycheck which will probably end up putting them on some therapist’s couch in about 15 years, lamenting about “that one summer when my mom worked and all my hopes and dreams of a fun summer died a long, slow, painful death.”

(sigh…)

So, like most working mom’s, I shoved the guilt down to the depths of my soul, where I will most likely have to deal with it at some point. But, as Scarlet O’Hara says, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Instead, I decided to fix the problem as best as I could. We invited Bean’s two best buds out for an afternoon at the Main Event for the ropes course, bowling, and basically my entire paycheck in arcade credits.

(Note to self: Add “buying offspring’s love” to list of therapy topics.)

But, the boys had a great time and Bean said it was one of his favorite birthdays, so that’s a big fat win in the mom column.

(Note to self: Add “setting unrealistic life expectations for offspring” to therapy topics.)

So, we probably won’t win any parenting awards for Bean’s birthday, but that doesn’t mean that it still wasn’t an awesome weekend spent celebrating a beyond awesome kid. It actually was a birthday weekend that perfectly summed up Bean’s personality, actually. Laid back and happy with pretty much anything, as long as cake and laser tag is involved.

Ten years of loving that little dude has just been the greatest. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEAN!