The week of the birthdays

My two kids have their birthdays this week. Daughter is turning 8 and son is turning 6. Like every other mum, for me the time has gone too fast. They are young children now, not little kids, not babies. They fight, screech, scream and tantrum and at the same time they are funny, energetic, affectionate, curious, good-natured and very close.

For their birthdays, I've forgone the traditional party thing and instead told each of them that they can invite a friend over to play and that we'll have cake at night. The thought of them having a party and getting tons of things they don't need to add to the shelves of stuff they already have wasn't my idea of good living so we downsized the idea a bit.

They were allowed to buy each other a small prezzie each and I bought them one each. I like them to go shopping for each other, to think about the other person and to think about what that person likes, what they're into etc. I want to teach them that the whole world is not about them and that they need to think of other people. On this subject, ex and I agree.

Yesterday was my daughter's birthday. It was very low key, just the way I wanted it. Two little girls turned up at the gate right on time, played, ate and played some more, girly giggles and chinese words abounding. It was nice for her and oh so calming for me. I wanted her to have friends around because, to my mind, that what it should be like for little kids - having friends come and go, playing, laughing, smiling, sharing secrets and even fighting and arguing - finding out what the world is like in the context of people their own age. I'm well aware that my own kids don't get enough of this kind of stuff which is part of the reason I wanted their birthdays to be this way. People seldom refuse an invitation to a birthday, even one as subtle as ours and so at the end we exchanged phone numbers and promised to do it again.

It was a nice way to spend the day and I was so understressed, I could still cook dinner and have a 'birthday cake' supper afterwards with family coming over. Ex got stressed out here, just for a minute, because I didn't seem to be getting coffee fast enough. So he got started instead (good for him) and I arranged the cake thing and a few nibbles. Then he asked the dreaded question - one of my triggers - are you in control, do you know what you're doing? Yes, I answered lightly, determined not to spoil my daughter's birthday - and went about my business, knowing that my mum in law and sis in law are not sitting on the couch thinking "where's the coffee, god these people are slow off the mark". They were watching the Olympics badminton, which is why I wasn't in a real hurry to get the coffee in the first place.

All in all, I think I did well. However, I have to admit, that due to pre-conceptions about what ex might and might not say, I did enlist the help of xanax. I was feeling anxious in the morning, the bakery had gotten her cake completely wrong - a complete mystery because just two days before I'd gotten a cake out of their fridge and asked for exactly the same one to be baked for Sunday. How they got it wrong, I have no idea. The writing was right, the cake all wrong!

So I didn't do the day completely on my own but I got through it all the same and I ignored the two stupid trigger comments ex made during the day/night.

I'll get there.