Saturday is Feisty Pants' birthday. She'll turn eleven
this year. We'll have a small dinner with cupcakes. (Cupcakes are the official
food of celebrations according to Feisty Pants.) The party will come later on
when the grandparents come up from out of town. We will celebrate both girls
birthdays with a pizza and ice cream fueled family gabfest then. We never were
ones for those ginormous parties with clowns or ponies or anything. First of
all, all that crap is expensive and silly (and clowns are SCARY to children.
Whoever came up the cockamamie idea that kids like clowns in the first place???
That was some old fart who thought some kid would think it was cool.) Secondly,
it always seems to me that those elaborate parties are about the parents' egos
and not the kids having a good time. Kids will have a grand old time with some
balloons and pizza. We've never had a kids only party for FP. When she was
little, it was too difficult to arrange anything in advance. We simply never
knew when she would be in a hospital. I dreaded the thought having some other
kid's parents change their crazy schedule around, only to call at the last
minute and go "nevermind". We did that enough with everybody else- therapists
and doctors and our grown up friends.
Which is basically why we have come to like
being boring. Exciting is helicopters and CPR and paramedics and ambulances
and policemen. NO thank you. I am truly grateful for every single contraption
and procedure and awesome human being who played a part in rescuing and saving
my youngest child over and over again. I am grateful in depths that simply
cannot be expressed in words or actions. You all literally saved my baby and ,
in doing so, my very heart and soul. Repeatedly. But if I never have an
exciting moment again, I am okay with that. If you never have to come to my
house and do it again. I am really ok with that. My idea of a good time is
sitting around at the end of a boring everday kind of day arguing over what to
watch on netflix. I crave those quiet in between moments where the most
pressing work is finished and the next round hasn't started yet. Those moments when the daily chores are done, the kid is in her pjs and (in a perfect world) the animals are cuddled up to us and snoozing. That's heaven to a special needs kid's parent.
And, to the tell the truth, Feisty Pants, likes
knowing things have a regular routine. All kids do to some extent. But if it
was hard for us to never know when we would be calling the ambulance or packing
to go to some out of town hospital, I cannot even really imagine what it must
feel like to be her in those instances. You feel like hell and can barely
breathe- scary enough for someone who is just a little girl, but now there are
sirens and strangers poking you with needles and sticking instruments in your
face. Worse still, they often take you away from your parents and don't
understand you when you talk or cry. Even more horrible, they wear masks and
you can't even see their faces so maybe they are not even people after all. (Ya
know, I just think I figured out why she is obsessed with aliens. A scary
hospital stay must feel just like an abduction experience.) So, I don't think
she minds so much just sitting at home having people she knows and trusts come
make a giant fuss over her. Especially when they clap and sing and bring her
cupcakes. Although, now that she is older, she is much more interested in
"stuff out ou Ummy". (Stuff without YOU, Mom.) So I should wait and see if she
asks for a kid's only party. If and when she does. she'll probably get it. But
no clowns. Those creatures have got something WRONG with them
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