Jack's birthday is around the corner on Sept 14th. I can't believe my little tiny newborn will already be turning one! I know time will only continue to fly by (sniff, sniff).
I've been thinking about what to do for his birthday party for a couple of months now. You may know that I never had a baby shower for Jack when I was pregnant with him. It's not that I didn't want to celebrate new life, the thought of a baby shower was just really difficult after losing Andrew.
But then we didn't really celebrate his 'baby dedication' at our church either. Many of our inmediate family members were not able to come to the dedication due to a last minute family emergency. I was sad that we didn't get to celebrate with our loved ones that day. I had been looking forward to his dedication for a really long time.
So with all of this, I really wanted to go all out for Jack's first birthday. In fact I wanted it to be so perfect that a couple of months ago I decided I needed to learn how to bake cupcakes for his party. Now I've never made cupcakes before so Jack and I drove over to Michael's thinking that would be a good start.
I must've looked really lost to a lady that morning, who after 20 minutes of watching me aimlessly walk and forth down the cupcake aisle finally had the courage to ask me if 'I needed help'- ha! I inmediately told her I really wanted to make cupcakes but had no idea where to start. She laughed with me and helped me find what I needed that morning.
Now I practiced baking cupcakes a couple of times with little success. For some reason they come out flat yet my kitchen ends up really messy!
Now last month when we got Jack's order of his birthday invitations I noticed the address was incorrect. I couldn't believe it! I was really irritated for some reason (by the way the error had been on our part and not the company that printed them). The invitation should've had 'River Rapids' instead of 'Rapids'.
The invitations reminded me of how imperfect things are. After prayer and trying to surrender it, I thought of my little boy Andrew and how he is still a part of me today.
He once again reminded me of what's important. I remembered how I felt on July 14, 2009 and the deep longing I had to hold and kiss Andrew on his one year old birthday- I would've given up anything to have him. I remember thinking how one year in comparison to 10 days- is a really, really long time.
And so I stopped worrying about having this perfect party for Jack. I had built this unrealistic expectation in my mind of what it should be like. Honestly I'm not able to 'do it all'. I can't bake well and I'm not very crafty. I probably won't be making handmade decorations as so many of my gifted friends do. There won't be homemade cupcakes or monogrammed decorations at his party. And today I am completely ok with that :) Perhaps one day I'll get better at baking as I'll continue to practice as Jack grows up.
But I am good at organizing, decorating, and enjoying time with my husband and little boy. I will try to do that on that day, and I hope just for a few moments of good laughter and memories with them.
I don't want this party to be centered around Jack and how wonderful he is. I want this day to be a day of praise and gratitude to the Lord for he has abundantly given to us and fulfilled a great desire of our hearts with a little brother to Andrew. He's given Jack strength and health so far, and for that we are glad. I hope Jack grows up knowing that this day is really not about him, but about thanking the One who sustains us.
Ok sorry for my sappy ending. I am so glad that I haven't fretted since then about planning Jack's party. It will turn out however it turns out. And lately Jack has switched from two naps to one nap a day from about 11-1pm. So at this rate he'll be sleeping through his own party- ha ha!
One more note- There were many wonderful and dear friends we were not able to invite. Steve has a lot of family on both his mom and dad's side so it left little room to invite a lot of people. Not that his party is that important, I just hope no one gets their feeling hurt.
I will be posting a lot over the next week or so, and tomorrow hope to post a picture of Jack laughing in the bathtub :)
