Gavin's Birthday

I have a history of crawling into a shell of denial when I get scared of something. For example, when I was going off to college and was (secretly) scared out of my mind, I didn't end up packing until midnight the night before. That's right. I packed everything in the middle of the night. In some weird area of my mind, I figured that if I didn't pack, it wouldn't really happen. Of course it did and I was left unprepared and frazzled instead of prepared and frazzled.

Well, history has repeated itself over and over since then with Gavin's first birthday being the most recent example. While all of the other mommys were sending out invitations and planning, I was twiddling my thumbs. Why? Because my baby boy couldn't possibly be turning one already. Nope. Not happening. So why plan a party for something that isn't happening, right? Wrong. He turned one. It happened. You know what else happened? The day before the "big day" I went into the dollar store in a panic trying to buy up a few party supplies to spruce up the apartment so that I felt like a little bit less of a failure.

We ended up having a few presents (a beach ball, snacks, matchbox cars, etc) a cake and some balloons. Enough to get pictures and feel like something happened. So why did I feel like the worst mother on the planet?

There are some pros to having a quiet celebration of just us and my mom and step-dad. He's going to have many many birthday parties that will demand a lot of time and money. At this point, the party is for the adults and if this adult didn't want it, well, that's enough of a reason not to have one. Right? We went to a birthday party for a little boy that was born the same day that Gavin was and it was....perfect. Not too big, not too much fanfare and it was age appropriate. His mom and dad did a great job and we all enjoyed ourselves. I just don't feel it is something that I need to do or something that our family even wants. Oh and the above mentioned denial.

To summarize, denial + lack of desire = no big party. So what's with the mommy guilt? Gah, mommy guilt is eeevvvvillll!