Last night we had L’s fourth birthday party. And by that I don’t mean that she turned
four, she turned three (a week and a half ago).
We had four parties for her. Here’s
what you need to understand about the logic – or perhaps lack of logic but
still sanity saving method: . Both sets of grandparents want the undivided
attention of their grandchildren and
us. If they just wanted to
passive-aggressively fight over who our girls dote on more, that would be fine,
but they just can’t leave Mark and I be.
The ones that can’t cook want to help in the kitchen. The
extroverts try to bond with the introverts.
And rather than vying for proof that their grandchildren love them; they
tend to try to prove that they know us
the best. It’s exhausting. Not to mention, the uncanny ability they have
to make our house seem small and our food seem like crap. Ask anyone who’s visited our house if we know
how to throw a good party, cook and serve a good meal, pour a good drink, or be
a gracious hosting couple. The answer will
be “absolutely.” As long as the person
you are asking isn’t related to us. All
bets are off then.
So after three
horrifying Christmas Eve dinners, one Christmas “drop-in” and two shockingly worse
Baptisms, we’ve called it quits on the dual family get togethers. And from the beginning we’ve done this with
the girls’ birthdays. So, L had a
lasagne dinner with chocolate cake the Friday before her birthday with Mark’s
parents and his son where his dad walked in with his humourous defensive
persona (not sure who is supposed to find it funny when he says things like “oops,
can’t touch your hair right V” and “oh,
i guess you didn’t really want to get me that glass of wine”) and his mom asking
Mark if he’d heard about so-and-so’s cousin’s wife’s dad dying and how was she
supposed to know they had were driving their grandson back to Toronto for us.
Then L had a casual drop-in the Sunday before her birthday
where my parents and sisters showed up, over-stimulated her, hassled sleeping
baby C waking her up in waves thinking it was hilarious (um, no, not really)
and my mother doing that weird child-like defensive thing where she “blames”
everybody else for things a la “Mama
said you can’t have that, not me. I
would let you run with scissors .” Just confirming this date had been hell with
my Dad’s response being “Uh sure, Sunday after church might work, we’ll see.” No!
No, we’ll see! Either you are
coming, or you aren’t.
Now, imagine trying to combine all of those quirks, schedule conflicts, and presents ("Oh, nana got you that. But I got you this." "Oh that was nice of grandma to get you that, I can make you another one just like it!") into one small space. Not.Going.To. Happen.
Of course, we had our own little supper complete with the
requested purple robot cake, on her actual birthday.
And last night, we had two of our couple friends over with
their children. We brought in the
reinforcements: seven bottles of wine
for the six of us. All of the kids had a
blast and the grown-ups did too. We made
gourmet grilled cheese (gruyere on potato-rosemary break with homemade braised
spare ribs) and had the “head” of the robot cake that I had remembered to take
out of the freezer. L had spent the
afternoon setting the table, washing berries, and then getting dressed up in a
puffy party dress that drowned her petite-ness but with a smile as big as her
heart!
Next month is R’s birthday and we’re really hoping to
whittle down the number of get togethers but we just don’t think we can cope
with a dual family shindig. There really
isn’t enough wine in the city to make that bearable.
Do your two sides of
the family get along? How many birthday parties/gatherings
do you do for your kids? (And how much
wine is involved?!)
No comments:
Post a Comment