Wednesday 31 July 2013

Birthday Musings

Birthdays are a funny old time for both adopters and adoptees if you really stop to think about it.  The sickly sweet Facebook posts people usually come out with on their children's birthdays give the impression that a birthday is a day for the whole family to reflect on the day that a little person arrived into the world with all the pain, joy and overwhelming emotion that came along with them.  Not so for an adoptive parent.  But clearly in saying that I don't mean for a second that we didn't feel something on Squiblet's birthday.  It was still the day that this fantastic little mini human popped out and landed in the world with more of a bump than most.  I still feel blessed that she did, blessed that she survived, blessed that she made it to us, but I think what I feel on the day she moved in, or the day we first met has more of the emotion attached to it which birth parents associate with birthdays.

A small part of me thinks about Squiblet's birth family, and what they might be feeling when Squiblet's birthday comes along and they have no way to celebrate it with her.  This is the oversized empathetic part of my brain which I often struggle to keep in check as it can sometimes be unhelpful.

But we celebrate the day she moved in.  We celebrated her six months with us, we compare it to the length of her life and proportionally how big a slice of cake it would be and we feel happy!  We celebrated with massive amounts of ice cream and fizzy (aka "bizzy") apple juice in plastic wine glasses!  We all had a lovely time and I will remember it forever.  We will always celebrate how wonderful it was when she came into our lives forever, and she will always know that her coming into our lives is the thing we are celebrating and not just a "birthday" because that's what you do, because everyone celebrates their birthday.

But now I know how to include pictures, I must share some snaps of Squiblet's birthday.  I went to town...it's what I do! There were spots, there were stripes, there was big art, there was jelly, there was cake. It was a memorable and wonderful day!  I hope you can get a sense of it from these snaps. Enjoy...we did!


7 comments:

  1. Lovely photos and I LOVE that spotty cake especially.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on birthdays and celebrations, and thanks for linking up to the Weekly Adoption Shout Out x

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  2. ENORMOUS CAKE!!!! Awesome! Thanks for sharing the pics :)

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    1. It was bigger than I expected. But it all got eaten! There was a *lot* of white chocolate ganache!

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  3. That cake looks amazing!! Did you make it?

    It will be my middle daughters first birthday with us soon and I too plan on going to town and making a big fuss of her.

    Thanks for blogging about some of the emotions that come with birthdays for adoptive parents. I can now be more prepared for how I/we may feel.

    Thank you.

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  4. I did! Baking was my diversion before Squiblet arrived and it was nice to get back to it. You had to make coloured cake pops first and then bury them into the cake mix. I didn't know it had worked until we cut it!

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