What I learned from throwing a winter birthday party for my four-year-old

“Mommy, Mommy,” his tiny and mighty hands pulled the heavy blanket from over my head to reveal my squinting eyes. “Mommy! Is today my birthday party?”

I was naive in thinking that planning a party for a four-year-old would be a breeze. For his first, second, and third birthday celebrations, his dad and I let him blow out some candles on a cupcake while singing “Happy Birthday.” Now that he was four, we thought it would be fun to throw him a party. One week into planning, I was ready to give up until I overheard him asking our device, “Hey Google, when is my birthday party?”

Damn it.

We are not in control

I remember driving to the drugstore to get the pregnancy test. I remember seeing the two lines and opening the instructions to double-check what the two lines meant — two lines mean positive. I remember pacing up and down waiting for my husband to get home to tell him the news and being annoyed at myself for not waiting until he got home to do the test in the first place so we could find out together. I remember my due date coming. I remember my due date passing …

The effortless art of making friends

He sat untying his boots in our hallway. I had heard him come home and dashed to meet him at the front door. Not to greet him with a warm smile and kiss but to ask if he knew the middle name of someone he would have once described to be his “brother from another mother.”

“What’s John’s middle name?” I asked my husband…

Germany, June 2023

After months of back and forth with my son’s teachers and the director of his kindergarten, I decided to de-register his place. I was beginning to feel like prey backed into a corner by these women. Every meeting was the same; two or three women sitting in front of me at a table telling me, “he needs too much attention, he needs too much care, we can’t deal with him.” They wrote reports on his unusual three-year old behavior, some of the brow-raising …