Zach's Birthday

Zach has never been one for parties or attention. He's the first kid that I have known who doesn't like people paying attention to him. Well at least that's true with my other kids anyway. Some days they seem to live for the spotlight. The first time I threw him a party, we were in Utah about the time of his second birthday, so I thought it would be fun to invite the cousins over and have a little party, I decorated a Blues Clues cake just for him, and my poor baby could not have been more miserable.

In this picture we are singing happy birthday to him, and he spent the whole time hiding his face under his little arm. I'm sure if he could talk he would have been saying. "Just go away. Please. Just go away."

This picture pretty much sums up the rest of the pictures from that day. He had the saddest little face in all the pictures. It's as if he is asking "Why are you doing this to me, mom?" It was pretty much the whole cliche- "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."So we didn't make that mistake again. The next year when he turned three we had some cake and he opened presents. Only with the whole present thing, he took like a full 24 hours to open his presents. And it's not cause there was a million of them. It was cause he took his sweet time, and would open one present, play with it for awhile (or several hours) and then when the other kids bugged him enough to open the next, then he'd get around to it. Every picture book was thoroughly studied before the next present could be opened. Puzzles had to be mastered, trains thoroughly played with, you get the idea. It about drove my other kids insane. Who ever heard of someone not ripping through the presents all at once to see what they got? Never once wondering "What's next?!?"

We finally did the friend thing when he was four, and he was somewhat wary, but a good sport. I think his least favorite part was when we sang "happy birthday", but he suffered through that with grace.

This year at six years old, he announced he didn't want a friend party. He just wanted to go to Chuck-E-Cheese's with the family. No Problem there. Entertaining little kids for a couple hours is not one of my many talents. Because of this simple request, I felt pretty good about giving him pretty much anything else he wanted in the way of special treatment on his day. Besides going to Chuck-E-Cheese's the Saturday before his birthday, we ended up at IHOP for dinner that day too. Then on his birthday, he wanted me to bring him a Happy Meal from McDonald's for lunch. More than happy to oblige. Cupcakes for the class. Wouldn't hear of doing anything less. Drive to school to pick them up so he didn't have to walk home. Not a problem. His favorite casserole for dinner. Would love to. Picking out some of his own birthday presents at Toys R Us. Whatever makes you happy. About the only thing I had a problem with was getting up at five so he could unwrap the couple little things we had picked out to surprise him with. Despite the fact he wanted to pick out his own presents, every 6 year old needs something to unwrap. I had stayed up waaaaaaayyyy past my bedtime working on that last post and five in the morning was just something I couldn't do. So he dragged me out of bed at six. After Toys R Us, we had cake and ice-cream, and he didn't even mind us singing to him. He was pretty excited about his NASCAR cake. He thought his birthday was the best birthday ever. And that's what really counts.