You say Birthday, I say Bribeday

I have started many new posts in the last few days; the titles run the gamut from "Boy4Sale, Cheap" and "Take My Son, Please" to "I am Joe's Vomit" and "Bodily Fluids: Not Just for Bathrooms Anymore." Thankfully, Shawn Joaquin's recent fourth birthday has given me other things to focus on, and we have yet to meet a gypsy family with whom we can strike a cash deal for our little wild boy.

In keeping with his idiosyncratic personality, Shawn Joaquin declared that his birthday should not have a party but still have a jungle theme, and one guest should come to his Not A Party: Amalie the Brilliant. In the weeks leading up to his not-a-big-day, he decided to include Olivia the Beautiful as well, but stopped short of calling it a party and demanded that all the associated mothers and grandmothers come, but no one else. Thankfully, Amalie and Olivia are each blessed with two mothers and no fathers, so no one needed to be excluded.

As the planning progressed, we began to refer to the event as Operation Jungle Babes and the theme morphed to include an emerging African bent, as well as a nod to Venezuela's Amazon tribes. All so very complicated and not readily available at BirthdayinaBox.com, so I became a crafty mom — homemade tablecloth with a unique tribal design, backed by an Ikea shower curtain. A centerpiece created from an Ikea basket and a mix of small palms, with overpriced yet wee jungle animals peering out of it. A tower of homemade cupcakes with centipedes, butterflies, scorpions and other friendly inhabitants of the jungle. The craftiness continued in the form of a tribal beading craft — not just kids' beads but beads purchased from High Strung with much discussion with the owner about the authenticity of said beads. Face painting was a must do, so that meant hours on the computer to determine how we could incorporate tribal-themed face paint — but in a Berkeley-way that was respectful to the indigenous peoples AND doable by one not skilled at face painting. It was all topped off with a DIY pizza opportunity with dough homemade by Gregg over a four hour period; Amalie the Brilliant included a single sliced apple in the center of her DIY pizza, perhaps a subtle homage to Magritte. It all wrapped up with a screening of The Jungle Book in our home theatre, complete with cozy blankets and crazy, inappropriate laughter on the part of all the kids.

In the end, I could have easily outsourced the party to Pump It Up and invited 24 more kids and still have saved countless hours and a big enough chunk of change to keep me in Diet Coke and Lean Cuisines for a long, long while. But I was so very, very sure that this party was it, The Bomb, the thing that Shawn Joaquin would experience and say "wow, you DO love me and now I can stop waking you up every hour on the hour with my banshee-like screams".

As we tucked Shawn Joaquin into bed that night I asked him how he enjoyed the evening.

Did you have a good time?

What Mowgli doing?

He's asleep. Did you have a good time?

I want to see it again NOW.

No, it's night-night time.

I wanna see it NOW! NOW! AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! DADDYYYYYYYYYYY! WAAAAAFAAAAAAA!

As my dad would say, let no good deed go unpunished. Or as I would say, find those gypsies. STAT.