Monday, January 31, 2011

BIRTHDAY TRADITIONS.

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Today ends birthday season here at our house with the celebration of my 28'th birthday. It was a wonderful day. Hannah, my three year-old made it her personal mission to make a party happen including cupcakes, balloons and games. Luckily, Jimmy's schedule was flexible enough today to accommodate a trip to Party City and some cupcake making. After our little family party, Jimmy and I went out to a late dinner.

With another season of birthdays come and gone, it has me thinking about birthday traditions. My mom went (in my mind) the extra mile to celebrate her kids big days. We always had a big, birthday breakfast in the morning before school. Pancakes were always on the menu, and my mom artfully created our new age out of pancake batter. For a number of years she made homemade crowns of cardboard and tinfoil and there was always a birthday poster. We even did presents before school. I have very fond memories of birthdays at our house.

Now, it's my turn as the mama to make my kids feel extra special on their big day. We have carried on the tradition of a birthday breakfast, only in our house because my husband is not a pancake guy, we have crepes. I am not sure how this tradition will hold through my husbands career of early mornings at the hospital, but so far so good.  And, just this year we had our first friends party with Hannah, but up to this point, it's been all family parties.

What do you seasoned mamas do to make your child's day extra special? Some families have a system down to a "t". Parties on the odd years, no parties on the even years etc; I would love to hear how you celebrate in your home.

7 comments:

Heidi said...

Happy birthday Erin!

I have no clue about our family birthday traditions yet. We've been all over the place on birthdays so far. I am hoping this year to peg a few things down.

Get ready for your husband to be gone every single morning making rounds, whether he is working or not that day. Good times! Maybe you can make the breakfast into a breakfast for dinner thing.

skinners said...

i love love love this blog and i don't know if i've ever told you that.

on a different note - my parents let us choose either a "friend party" or going out to dinner as a family. since money was tight for most of my time living at home, eating out at restaurants didn't happen very often. some of my favorite birthday memories are from eating at a sit down restaurant with my whole family since it was such a rare occurance.

AllisonK said...

Happy Birthday.

I'm the bad parent here because we don't do friend parties on birthdays. I am selfish with my children and they are growing up too quickly.

We do have up to 3 parties with various family members, birthday breakfast dinner the night before (our different early schedules don't allow a family birthday breakfast), dinners and such. It's a long drawn out affair, we love it.

Erin@mamaswhoknow said...

Thanks for the comments ladies, I love hearing your ideas. Keep 'em coming.

granny said...

Happy birthday to you!

We do friend parties on even years. I always decorate a special cake. I try to tell the birthday child something about the day he/she was born. At dinner we all tell things we love about the birthday child....just all we can do to help him or her feel special!

Mary Anne said...

Happy Birthday Erin!

I try to put streamers up in a doorway somewhere they can run through and also decorate the living room with balloons, streamers, etc. the night before so that they wake up to the decorations. Other than that, I'm pretty terrible at the traditions! We've done parties for Sadie both years and had friends over. It was really just our friends and their kids, though. The kids ran around and played, and the adults got to talk. I probably won't get away with that for too much longer. Sadie's getting smart. I think I'm going to steal the pancake birthday number idea. I really like that. Heather Park (an ROTC spouse...don't know if you know her) does that, too. Must be a good one!

marta said...

happy birthday erin. that may be the cutest picture ever. and i love the banner in the background and your mike & ike's.

birthday - my mom always made our favorite dinner, we had presents before school, usually a new outfit and we'd often get checked out of school for lunch. which was rad. i remember toting cupcakes to lunch one day and tripping on the school bus and having them all tumble out on the grimy floor. if i remember correctly, my sister picked them all up and i think we still fed them to my class.

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