Please? You can make this my birthday and Christmas presents.
The staff at Abbie Update is running frantically trying to set up a first birthday party for Abbie. We only have 26 days left. Our situation reminds me of the fable involving the ant and the grasshopper, where the ant realizes winter is coming and spends all his time storing food and preparing his home for the season, while the grasshopper wastes time doing whatever it is that amuses grasshoppers until winter arrives. Then the grasshopper, realizing that there is no more food to be found and his home offers no protection from the cold and snow, kills the ant and takes his food and home. If only there were an ant hoarding supplies for a child’s first birthday that we could hunt down.
How much work could it possibly be to plan a birthday? Ha! First we need presents. This is made very difficult by the fact that she shows no preferences for any particular toys. If she loved some TV show, then we could buy any toy and be confident that she’d love it as long as it was plastered with the image of a licensed character from that show, like Elmo, or Ernie, or Emeril. Instead we have to try to think like a one-year old to find something she’ll like. Adding to the pressure is the fact that we want her first presents to be something she’ll remember, which is ironic since she won’t be forming any memories for a couple years yet. Today I took a wild guess and bought her a toy with a name like The Brainy Baby’s Cranium Cramming Block of Edutaining Fun. This toy is so full of tiny brain building activities that it’s almost guaranteed to teach Abbie that it’s a really lame toy and she should go back to finding dog food to chew on.
Then there’s the party. Every good party needs a theme, and picking a theme is also difficult because of Abbie’s aforementioned lack of preferences. We’re taking a stab at a Sesame Street theme, partly because we often play a CD full of Sesame Street songs that she doesn’t seem to hate, and partly because Sesame Street, in lieu of accepting advertising revenue, supports itself by splashing its licensed characters on a dizzying array of products designed to gouge clueless parents. So we have necessary birthday supplies like plates, balloons, and fire extinguishers all sporting Sesame Street characters. We have yet to assemble treat bags for the guest children, but you can bet they’ll scream Sesame Street just as soon as we figure out which neighbor kids are coming, and what kind of treats would appeal to children ranging in age from 9 months to 27 years (some sort of sharp object would be my guess).
I can’t forget the cake. Abbie needs her own special cake to dig her mitts into. Ellie decided a rubber ducky cake (as in “you make bath time lots of fun”) would be cute, and has been experimenting with a recently purchased cake mold to determine the optimal process for creating said cake. Have you ever wondered what a rubber ducky cake looks like?
Now you know. And now I need to go ant hunting.
How much work could it possibly be to plan a birthday? Ha! First we need presents. This is made very difficult by the fact that she shows no preferences for any particular toys. If she loved some TV show, then we could buy any toy and be confident that she’d love it as long as it was plastered with the image of a licensed character from that show, like Elmo, or Ernie, or Emeril. Instead we have to try to think like a one-year old to find something she’ll like. Adding to the pressure is the fact that we want her first presents to be something she’ll remember, which is ironic since she won’t be forming any memories for a couple years yet. Today I took a wild guess and bought her a toy with a name like The Brainy Baby’s Cranium Cramming Block of Edutaining Fun. This toy is so full of tiny brain building activities that it’s almost guaranteed to teach Abbie that it’s a really lame toy and she should go back to finding dog food to chew on.
Then there’s the party. Every good party needs a theme, and picking a theme is also difficult because of Abbie’s aforementioned lack of preferences. We’re taking a stab at a Sesame Street theme, partly because we often play a CD full of Sesame Street songs that she doesn’t seem to hate, and partly because Sesame Street, in lieu of accepting advertising revenue, supports itself by splashing its licensed characters on a dizzying array of products designed to gouge clueless parents. So we have necessary birthday supplies like plates, balloons, and fire extinguishers all sporting Sesame Street characters. We have yet to assemble treat bags for the guest children, but you can bet they’ll scream Sesame Street just as soon as we figure out which neighbor kids are coming, and what kind of treats would appeal to children ranging in age from 9 months to 27 years (some sort of sharp object would be my guess).
I can’t forget the cake. Abbie needs her own special cake to dig her mitts into. Ellie decided a rubber ducky cake (as in “you make bath time lots of fun”) would be cute, and has been experimenting with a recently purchased cake mold to determine the optimal process for creating said cake. Have you ever wondered what a rubber ducky cake looks like?
Now you know. And now I need to go ant hunting.
posted by Matt at
11:08 PM
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