It's Gobbles Time!: Back in December... part 1

December is a very eventful month for our little family. Our anniversary, Gobbles' birthday, and of course, Christmas. I spent the last two weeks of the month praying each day that I would not go into labor early enough to have another December baby, because I already feel bad enough trying to give Gobbles his own time amidst all the holiday chaos.

But, we survives, and it looks like I'll be having a late January / early February baby after all. So back to December. I left off with my little boy turning two. We anticipated having a large party for him, but when we hadn't moved into a larger house by then as planned, we had to improvise, cutting down the guest list to family and only about a third of our parent friends. Again, the woes of having a winter baby - no big backyard party!

We kept it pretty casual getting sandwiches and chicken fingers from the local deli, while hubs cooked up Gobbles' favorite homemade mac 'n cheese. I baked some cookies and we ordered a cake with a fire truck theme. We hung a few streamers and blew up balloons, and called it a party. The entire week of his birthday we told Gobbles "Your party is on Saturday, and these are the friends you're going to see". He was thrilled and kept telling everyone all week - Birthday Party Saturday!

By the time Saturday came, he was raring to go. With a recent string of birthdays in the family and school, Gobbles knew that the best part of birthdays are CANDLES! He had almost perfected the Happy Birthday song and was singing it to himself in preparation. We had no set agenda for his party, just basically, playing, presents, and cake since the guests ranged in age from 6 weeks to 60 years. It suited us just fine, as Gobbles played with his buddies by coloring, using punch balloons, and pulling out a number of toys in the basement that he hadn't seen in ages.

The one thing I was afraid of was that my boy would not be very good at sharing his own toys on his own turf. To my relief, no tantrums were thrown. He is a manipulative bugger though. If a friend was playing with something he wanted, he'd offer them a trade. For instance, there was a yellow balloon that was just that much more appealing than the rest, so he kept insisting that his friend take the orange one. After the friend would release the yellow, Gobbles would grab it. Sneaky sneaky little boy!

My favorite part of the day was when we actually sang happy birthday to Gobbles. The look on his face was absolutely priceless. He was so happy and proud that all these people were singing for him! His smile was so wide I nearly shed tears. That's all we wanted from his party. Of course, everyone was overly generous with gifts too, and Gobbles was a trooper lasting through opening about half before he wanted to actually stop and play with them.

He talked about his party for weeks afterwards and how much fun he had. This age is so much fun, Gobbles has started retaining his memories enough to talk about them days and weeks afterwards, and they are always joyous and happy, which is all a mom could ever want.