It's Her Party (Or Lack Thereof....)

In two weeks, BB will celebrate her 3rd birthday. (Which I'm still in denial about, frankly. How IS that possible?!?) In 13 days, we will be moving into our new place. We finally got our move-in date on Friday!

This means that having a birthday party for my daughter poses a wee bit of a challenge. Lucky for me, more than a month ago BB started saying in no uncertain terms that she did NOT want to have a party for her birthday. She did NOT want to have friends over and (perhaps most importantly to her) did NOT want to share her cake with anybody other than her family.

When she first started saying this, I found it odd and did my best to figure out why she might feel that way. Other than the bit about sharing the cake, she couldn't come up with a reason. At the time, we had no idea that we would be moving the day before her birthday. So I did my best to convince her that a larger party would be fun. Nothing doing. She just didn't want to!

I'd thought that the recent spate of birthday parties might change her mind. In the past two weeks, we've been to a bounce house party and a gymnastics party. But she remains steadfast in her refusal. And frankly, now that we've been told we have two weeks to pack up and move, I'm OK with that. Certainly simplifies things!

After all, it's her party -- and if she wants it to be a small family affair, that's fine! We'll have a cake, get some helium balloons, and call it done.

Though I have to say, it was mighty fun to see the kids at the gym party. BB was all over the equipment and especially loved the trampoline and the hanging bar. BJ was pretty enthusiastic as well, though he was also more cautious.

Exhibit A of the difference between my boy and my girl. She got right up on the balance beam and pranced about. S was right there (that's his hand in the photo) but she was happy to do it by herself.

BJ declared that even the short one was "too tall!" and wanted to crawl down it. Had a great time doing so, though!

Exhibit B: Contrast BB on the trampoline with BJ in the videos below. Guess who paid attention to the explanation for how best to use the trampoline (be in the box and only one kid at a time). But again, the most important thing is that they are both clearly having a grand time, in their own unique ways.

Side note: Take a look in the background of the video and you can see the high bar that BB was hanging from in the first pic of this post. It's right above the "ENCORE" sign. The first time she hung on the bar, the "coach" caught her on the way down when she fell and helped her to land. (A bit odd to call a "PARTY ANIMAL" a coach, but ah well.) The second time she did it the coach was still right there but not holding her, and she dropped all by herself into the foam pit below -- and was happy as could be! (Even though my heart was in my throat!)

After the success yesterday, we are considering enrolling both kids in gymnastics classes. The place we're considering has a free trial class, and we'll try one out soon. Because between moving and celebrating birthdays and enrolling in kindergarten (!!! don't even get me started on that one!!! talk about Mom in denial....) Not to mention Everything Else -- clearly, we don't have enough to keep us busy! HA!

The neat thing is that both kids now know about the impending move (we told them on Friday) and they are VERY excited about it. They want to box everything up NOW. They don't seem to quite understand that whatever is boxed up NOW will not be accessible for at least two weeks and probably longer. It makes trying to pack with their "help" a wee bit challenging. But it's cute to see.

Wish us luck in getting through the next two weeks. 'Cos we're gonna need it!