What's a Mom to do?

So I've been in a birthday state of mind these days. I'm not sure why. Probably because I'm doing some "birthday work" for my friend Darlene. Also Mike's birthday is less than a month away. Now if you know Mike at all you know he gets, well how can I put this delicately? Like a bear with a sore ass around his birthday. For about a week or so preceding his birthday there was no point in talking to him or really even glancing in his direction because, boy howdy, is he grouchy. In the past few years, since Abby arrival on the scene he's been handling his birthday with much more grace and we all whispered a short prayer of thanks and hoped it would continue.

From all respects it looks like the years of grace maybe coming to an end. Last year I noticed a slight increase in the bitchiness department approaching the beginning of March. This year he has already stated that he wants to do nothing for his birthday! Nothing! HA! As if he has a say. So I've been trying to work out what to do about his birthday. I know what I'd like to plan, but it's the exact thing he's asked me not to plan. My gut tells me to go ahead and plan it anyway since I'm pretty confident he'll have a great time. I'm giving myself another week to make a decision.

Of course with all this birthday grumbling discussion going on in the house Abby has been reminding me nearly daily that her birthday is coming too. Yeah it's coming alright, in June. She's already spent an afternoon pouring over the Wilton Yearbook to pick out her cake, Lightening McQueen. She has also been giving me gentle direction about who should be on the guest list, what we should eat and what the entertainment should be. This is where it gets tricky.

This will be Abby's first "school birthday" and I'm not really sure just what the procedure is. I know she'd love to invite her entire class, but that just isn't going to happen. Now we are in the party rental business, specifically children's parties so Abby is hooked up to have one rockin' party at no real expense to us. She/We really lucked into a pretty cool set up and of course she wants to share it with her friends and we want her to be able to share it with her friends. On the other hand we have family, lots of family. Remember there were 20 people at Maya's birthday. Of course Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Godparents and so on will expect to celebrate her birthday with her. And to top it all off I am aware that whatever I do, I am also setting precedence for Maya.

My instinct says to let her have a few of her school friends over for a couple of hours in the afternoon and follow up with a family bbq for dinner. Now after all the trouble I went through to make sure we had a scaled back easy Christmas, this seems a little crazy. However, if we don't do everything on one day we're looking at losing two days profits since our equipment will be here, not making any money. Now another option is to blend the school friends with the family, but that sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster. Mike's suggestion is to invite a couple of the kids from our neighbourhood that are in her class, which is a great idea on paper, but I know she has other "favourites" at school who wouldn't get invited. See how I can talk myself around in circles. Yes, it is exhausting, thanks for asking. Just like Dani, my parenting manual is also missing it's chapter on birthday parties.