icklebabe.com, it's in the blog

Friday I’m in love-birthdays

So this week was Milly’s third birthday. I have to admit I started thinking about it as soon as the last Christmas bauble was shoved in the attic.

I was excited, 3 is the first year they can properly be part of their birthday rather than just being there, if you get what I mean? And I wanted it to be great!

First I did what any modern day mother does, I pinterested it. I scrolled through lots of fantastic, colourful , imaginative, amazing pictures. I visited blogs , filled with farm themed parties in real barns. Pretty, film set type barns with swept gleaming floors and artfully placed antique pitchforks.  Not a cow pat in sight, although they did have ( presumably house trained) baby cows and hay bales for seating.

I saw rainbow themed parties and red riding hood parties and pirate girl parties with lovingly (perfectly made) card board box ships that looked like part of the set from pirates of the caribbean.

To be honest I started to get an inferiority complex, my bum cheeks clenched in birthday party anticipation. But heck, if they can do it, so can I!

So I ordered tiny milk bottles, and red candy striped straws, firework candles and indoor sparklers. I was busy scrolling though party printables on etsy  , deciding between themes, should I go rainbow utopia? Or sparkle princess? ….

But then something happened, I think it’s called life, and it kind of got in the way….

I realised with 24 hours to go, that this was not going to be the party of mine ( or Milly’s) dreams, we weren’t going to have fire eaters or loin tamers, the gig was as they say, up.

I felt my heart sink, a lump in my throat. And then I remembered parties from my childhood.

Playing cowboys and Indians with makeshift ramshackle teepees made out of old sheets and garden sticks. Bobbing for apples. Homemade popcorn necklaces and mugs of Heinz tomato soup and hotdogs. I remember the year my mum pulled out *all the stops* and hired our local magician for my tenth party. I spent the entire party in my bedroom crying because my best friend wouldn’t sit next to me at the party table, I hear the magician was very good, there was rabbits and everything.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, the penny dropped. Milly would enjoy the party with or without all the big shot paraphernalia. She would mostly enjoy it because it was just going to be us, me , papa, Ellie and jack. A family, spending time together, wishing her a Happy Birthday.

And she did have a blast, we had hot dogs, and rice crispy cakes, and fairy cakes with butterflies on top, and some fireworks we had left from bonfire night. She was ecstatic and woke up the next morning shouting Happy Birthday!!! To herself, wishing it was going to happen all over again.

So happy 3rd Milly sweetheart, don’t grow up to fast, and don’t worry next year mummy will have the barn and the trained baby lambs picked out and booked way in advance , *wink!

{ All Photo’s courtesy of Pinterest and Me }