Prepping for Molly's 1st Birthmas

When Molly called an audible and decided to surprise her dad and me by making her grand entrance on Christmas Eve, we knew that balancing her birthday and the Christmas season in a way that celebrated both without diminishing either would be an issue for the next 18 years or so. (I'm sure it will still require good balance after 18, but that's more up to her than David and me.) David already has some experience in this area, being that his birthday is December 30, but I suspect he is much more laid back than most people; I also suspect girls might react to this differently than boys. I suppose we'll see.

But I naively expected this year to be exempt from that worry. I, being the over-achiever that I am, would obviously still obsess about it, but I felt pretty confident that Molly wouldn't be too concerned.

[Sidenote: numerous people have suggested the half-birthday celebration. Though I understand the urge, I would never want to give the impression that there's something wrong, or even inconvenient, about Molly's real birthday; I feel like that would only increase the likelihood of Molly disliking her Christmas Eve birthday. Instead, I want to make a huge deal out of it, showing her how wonderful it can be to have a holi/birth/day.]

Though it's true that Molly is quite laid back about her upcoming Birthmas (you'd think she doesn't even realize she's about to turn one!), I was completely wrong about the idea that Molly's contentment would mean that there would be no difficulty or frustration. [Insert your "duh" here.] Here's why:

• Twice the Gifts - Admittedly, this seems like a good thing. And I'm sure Molly will eventually love it. But at 12 months, there are only so many things I can think of for people to get Molly, so I keep coming up short when people request gift ideas. And I completely understand the disinterest in buying clothes and shoes (especially for this first big celebration), but at some point I ran out of more "fun" ideas. On the plus side, hopefully this will earn courage creativity and ingenuity (instead of uninspired plastic blah).
• Gifts Once a Year - Related to the "twice the gifts" issue, this is the reason I completely understand the urge to have a half-birthday celebration. I hadn't considered that Molly will really only have one "gift-receiving" time a year. Practically, that means that she'll get a lot of 12 month gifts that she may grow out of long before next December. Hopefully enough of the things she gets will be interesting for the next year or so, allowing me to hide some from her and bring them out later as a delayed surprise. Her "big gift" from us is technically for 18 months, and I'm hoping that will be true of some other things she receives as well. Additionally, this means that in the future she'll only have one time a year that she can ask for something really big or out of the ordinary (I always "save up" big things I want for my birthday or Christmas). I want to come up with a way to do something extra special for her during the summer to make up for this, but I'll wait to figure that out when the times comes.
• Party Planning - I knew that finding a convenient date for her birthday party would be difficult [And that's true. Our options were either to have it two weeks early in Tallahassee with her friends or a week late in Kentucky with family. Family and friends is a no-go.] What I didn't think about how difficult the planning for the actual party would be. The end of the semester and planning for Christmas (both gifts and travel) is difficult enough. Squeezing in party planning (which is admittedly only minimally difficult this year) makes it much more of a time crunch. Note to self: start planning in June next year.

All that to say I am no less excited about Molly's first year than were it at any other time of year. She is at the coolest age (though I know I say this at every age). She is full of energy and spontaneity and fun. [Example, she has a refrigerator magnet toy that, if you put the wrong combination of magnets together, says "You're silly!" and then laughs. Today she kept pushing it, waiting for it to laugh, and then cracking up herself. Priceless.] She is going to love the excitement of her birthday and Christmas, so this year, that's all I care about. I know that it will become more of an issue as she gets older, but I am always going to do my best to make her love her Birthmas, because I know that I will.

*All credit for the awesome combiword that so aptly describes the 24th and 25th of December in our house goes to my friend Stephanie, who is tied for wittiest person I know with her husband.