6.02.2008

 

Birthday Wishes

This is a weird week for me, since Kent is starting daycare on Wednesday. I poured my heart out to Jack about it yet again last night — he's such an understanding guy to listen to my concerns over and over. This morning (well, at 3 a.m.), I decided to stop focusing on Wednesday and start thinking ahead about Kent's future, like when he's starting kindergarten and has the experience of going to school already so he's not paralyzed with fear, or when he can stay in the church nursery (someday soon?) for the whole hour without looking around for us and crying. So, onto the future. Enter the birthday plan.

We're having a small get-together with Jack's parents and a few friends in town, no other babies, no crazy pony in the backyard. The theme is going to be cats, Kent's favorite thing to grab and love. We'll have to do something to safely include Patti and Celia in the festivities, and I'm also trying to decide how best to decorate a cake with a cat on it. There will be presents, of course — a few fun books we've found, some games/puzzles, etc. — but that's not the main focus. Here's where all of you come in. Yes, all of you. Don't feel like you have to send a present; what I want you to do instead is mail a card or piece of stationery to Kent with a birthday message, and we'll read them at his party and then keep all of them in the Kent Box with his hospital bracelets, cards from when he was born, his baptism certificate, and other such keepsakes. (Leave a comment or email me if you need our address.) You can write about when you met him (if applicable), give advice for the future, tell a funny story about his parents, etc. He'll have these to pull out and read on his birthdays or anytime he wants for the rest of his life. If you want to stick with the cat theme, you could look for a cute cat card, or include a photo of a cat you know so that he can enjoy looking at all the felines. Plus, I think it will be funny when he's 30 to look through these and be reminded of how much he loved cats when he was a baby.

This idea is an offshoot of one I read about in The Creative Family, just one of her many beautiful suggestions to take a child's focus off material things and shift it to appreciation of people and life's experiences.

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Comments:

What a great idea! Please do e-mail me with your address; I don't think I have it anymore.
 
What a lovely idea E!
 
I just thought of an easy way to make a cat cake.
Use the good fortune cat like this one. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anilia/2217246467/

then all you have to do is make a round cake and then a little extra for ears and tail...
 
Hugs in advance for you & Kent for Wednesday! Hang in there.

I love love LOVE your birthday card idea. That sounds like a birthday tradition in the making! How fun it will be when he's older and he gets to look back at what people sent to him over the years. So sweet!
 
I used to have a book with drawings and directions for making cakes using regular cake pans and doing minimal cutting and piecing, and it had a cat cake in it. I searched online and found a good example. (It may be TOO easy for someone of your craftiness, but perhaps you'll have so much else to do that you'll welcome a simple solution.)
 
For some reason I missed seeing this post earlier. We will send Kent a card. I will put it in my planner.
 
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