New Birthday Tradition

I have thrown big birthday parties for Isaac for the past five years - most notably his third birthday where we had around 250 people in attendance! But this year there was nothing more than a cake. I did get him a present - The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo. I thought that since he's been so enthusiastic about reading lately, he'd love another big "chapter book" that we could read together. His response was less than desirable - he said, "Birthday presents are supposed to be toys!"

So, in an effort to recoup the birthday spirit, I said that we are going to have something called a "birthday week". This has turned out to be a great thing! It spreads the parental stress across several days and makes the kid feel like a prince (or princess) all week! Every day he got an extra treat in his lunch, he got to have some friends over to visit after school on a few nights, he got special cake and magic show (thanks to grandma and grandpa) in his classroom, and to end it with a bang, he got a mini-shopping-spree at Toys R Us.

It worked out really well, and I'm going to do it again next year. I'm hoping that I can escape the nightmare of a room full of sugar-poisoned seven-year-olds next year by convincing him to let me spend the money it would take to throw a birthday party on another shopping spree!