Jadon’s Birthday Party

When we celebrated Jadon’s first birthday we kept his party pretty simple. I didn’t know how he would react to a large party and certainly didn’t want pictures of him crying into his first birthday cake, so we erred on the side of caution and invited only family. Since my parents and brother were the only family we had in Clarksville the party was fairly small. I bought a Mexican feast spread from my favorite Mexican restaurant, wrapped a few gifts, blew up some balloons and made his cake. Jadon didn’t like ‘regular’ cake but liked angel food cake, so cut an angel food cake into three layers and filled them with pastry cream and strawberries, covered the cake in cool whip and stuck a candle on top. He dug into the cake and had a grand time. He only cried when we cut his hair before bedtime; speaking of which, cutting Jadon’s hair is quite the ordeal in his life. It is a 3 person job – one to hold him and his arms, one to hold his head and one to cut his hair. And it helps if all three wear earplugs to cut the edge off his screams. I am hoping this phase will end before his 30th birthday.

Given the comedy of errors my life has been these last two weeks I took no chances and was more on top of Jadon’s second birthday than I was Christmas. A week before his birthday I went to the party store and picked up streamers and dinosaur themed plates, cups, napkins and tablecloths. I also ordered the cake a week ahead of time and planned out the menu – I wanted this to be as simple as possible so that I wouldn’t run into a problem. The night before the party I pulled out the folding tables, reminded my mom to bring extra folding chairs and made out my ‘to do’ list. The day of the party should have been smooth sailing. I had scheduled the birthday cake to be ready by 3:00 pm and called Papa Murphy’s to pre-order the take and bake pizzas so that they would be ready for pick-up around 4:00 pm. I was planning on Jadon going down for his nap around the usual time at 12:00 noon, waking up around 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm and then taking him over to Ann’s so that she could watch him while I ran my errands and decorated the house since I did not want him underfoot while doing these things. I was still deciding on his gift at the last minute so I planned on a trip to Toys R’ Us before heading to Kroger for the cake, balloons and groceries. After I picked up the cake I was going to pick up the pizzas and head home to decorate. Jacques was going to be home by 4:30 pm so he would be able to pick Jadon up after I had decorated the house and bring him home shortly before everyone arrived for the party. I had also given myself a few hours of extra time in the schedule knowing that I might need them. I was ready to give myself a pat on the back for being so organized and on top of things.

My days revolve around Jadon’s naptime and Nathan’s feedings. From the start of one feeding to the next I have 2 hours so my errands can’t take more than 2 hours. And I can’t schedule anything around Jadon’s naptime, nor will I wake him up from a nap to get something done because then he won’t go back to sleep. And a child without a full nap is a cranky child by the end of the day. So his birthday, of all days, is when he fought and fought and fought his nap. He didn’t fall asleep until 1:30 pm. I wasn’t too concerned about it since I had scheduled a couple extra hours of wiggle room because this has happened before, but I really hoping that his nap wouldn’t last longer than his usual hour because that would be cutting it REALLY tight. So wouldn’t you know it – he slept 2 hours! Once he wakes up I need to give him about 20 minutes to ‘wake up’, so I knew that throwing him in his car seat when he first woke up from his nap wouldn’t work. About 20 minutes after he woke up we were finally ready to go and I was starting to stress – I worked so hard to make sure I wouldn’t be rushing around last minute and here I was, running around at the last minute. So as I was getting the kids in the car Nathan it would be the perfect time to cry for lunch. Great! So I had to get him out of his seat, feed him and get him back in his seat. But it gets even better – I got stuck behind a school bus trying to get to the main road and the bus stopped every couple hundred yards. Once I was FINALLY out on the main road traffic was backed up because of an accident. Three lanes were merging down to one lane and it took forever to get to Ann’s house. By now I had 45 minutes to get a gift, stop by Kroger and pick up the pizzas… not happening. So I called Jacques who was on his way home and asked him to pick up the pizzas. I ran to the toy store and as I was leaving I called Jacques and told him to get one of the pizzas in the oven and then called my mom to she if she could come early to help decorate. I ran over to Kroger’s to pick up the cake – it looked great! – and picked up the other groceries I would need while someone in the floral department blew up the balloons. I made it home with hardly any time to spare. My parents had already arrived at the house and were starting to decorate. Jacques left to pick Jadon up on I got home, which was a few minutes before everyone arrived.

We invited a few more people to Jadon’s birthday this year but still kept it really small since I didn’t want him to be too overwhelmed. My parents and Jacques mom and step-dad came as well as a few friends. Caleb and Amy have two little girls around Jadon’s age (we see them often and get together for playdates) and even though Adam and Tracy don’t have any kids, we see them quite a bit so Jadon knows them well. And since all of us go to the same church everyone knew each other. My plan to have Jadon home before everyone arrived didn’t work out so when Jadon walked through the door to a roomful of people singing Happy Birthday in a house decked out in streamers and balloons, he started crying. He got over that pretty quickly though and soon was running all over the house crazy-excited. He was too excited to eat pizza but not too excited for cake and ice cream… go figure! And of course he loved unwrapping gifts (he learned that one real fast at Christmas).

Enjoy the pictures!