Madness

Last week was total madness. I'm so glad it's over. Birthday madness, Halloween madness, and don't even get me started on the havoc that the time change is wreaking on this household; hell hath no fury like a child who gets up at 5:00 am, refuses to nap, and is begging to go to bed at 4:00 in the afternoon.

The birthday girl started her day at 5:30 am, jonesing for presents and cake. That's her at about 5:40 am up top, assessing her sweet loot. Hazel's grandparents (most of them), some friends and family all helped her celebrate her third birthday at our favorite park. There were bagels, juice and cake, just like last year. But unlike last year, when we had about 50 people coming and I had to be organized, this year we had about 15 people and I decided to go low-stress, worry-free and just kind of wing it, not taking anything too seriously. Which, of course, resulted in me feeling like a complete jerk for forgetting candles for the awesome Maisy birthday cake, which Mike had to run to the store for. While there, he forgot to buy matches. While he was at home getting matches, I had not yet realized we forgot forks, with which to eat the cake, and didn't until after I'd started cutting the cake, which I was able to do only because we had two knives for the cream cheese schmears, both of which Hazel had used as her own personal spoons, to scoop huge mounds of cream cheese into her mouth sans bagel, as is her preference. And on it went... The party was a perfect example of my dilemma as a mom - I want to be the freewheelin', devil-may-care kind of hippie mom who enjoys eating cake with her fingers and doesn't fret about things like whether her friends think she's a total weiner for having a year to plan the party, only to do some half-assed shopping and planning three days before. But that it's-cool-man!-hippie-mom is sometimes (often?) usurped by critical-embarassed- why-am-i-so-disorganized?-mom, who can not believe she let something like the friggin' birthday candles slip her mind on her child's special day. *SIGH* Hazel didn't care about any of it, she was just happy to have everyone there in her honor, happy to mow down two plates full of frosting with her fingers, plus some off the cake, and happy to be wearing a party hat, which, besides the Maisy cake, was her only birthday request. What a sweetheart.

Halloween went off without a hitch, and not just because we didn't host it! We headed to San Mateo to trick-or-treat with our friends, and their neighborhood was packed with decorated houses and trick or treaters. Violet threw a huge, inexplicable tantrum the first half of the evening, so I didn't bother with dressing her up in her chick costume, but the big girls looked adorable and were very polite trick-or-treaters, always staying together, always remembering to say thank you. There they are at the beginning of the evening (Tinkerbell, Dash and Daisy-Head Mayzie), before I, in full hey-whatever!-superfun-hippie-mom-mode, made the mistake of sharing a giant pixie stick with them. Critical-hindsight-is-20/20-mom soon wished she hadn't let the 3 girls mainline pure sugar, and is now wishing that she had taken at least one photo of Hazel and Violet together on Vi's first Halloween, costume or no costume, but oh well. There's always next year.