a birthday surprise

Four years ago I got the most amazing birthday gift I could have imagined: I brought my first, sweet baby girl home from the hospital. And since then I've been happy to mostly forget about my birthday. It seems wiser, somehow, to focus first on Kathleen and then on baby Jesus, and simply take some time to catch a breath in between.

And that was the approach I'd thought we'd take to my birthday this year. We'd talked vaguely of trying to go out to dinner, just Jim and I. But we don't have a regular sitter (okay, we don't have a sitter at all, save grandparents, who were already committed to come visit us twice that week for the princess party and Christmas Eve) and the idea of leaving all three children at bedtime with someone they didn't know made my head spin. So we'd abandoned that plan and I'd moved on to treating it like any other day. In fact, I'd made appointments for the girls to get their H1N1 shots that morning. Happy birthday to me!

But Jim wasn't having it. And, unbeknownst to me, he contacted my friends and concocted a plan. He called and rearranged the girls' inoculations. And he kept it a secret! Well, it was a secret until just before the princess party, when he filled me in on his grand plans... so I wouldn't be taken aback by the goings on the next day. And when he told me, I cried.

For my birthday, Jim sent my friends and I out to lunch at lovely restaurant in Los Gatos while he watched our children. As of the morning of my birthday, Jim was planning to watch nine children at our home. As it turned out, one friend had a sick little one, so the grand total was instead six. But Jim would've watched them all. And he'd have done it with the same nonchalant, amazing attitude that he watched the six. "Oh," he said, "It was no big deal. It was fun, really."

So for several hours on my birthday, my girlfriends and I were real grown-ups. We conversed in complete sentences. (Well, to the extent that we're able to anymore, at least.) We lingered over our food. We laughed and we talked and we laughed some more. It was refreshing. And relaxing. And fun. And friends, I don't think I have to tell you what a rare thing that is.

It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. Thanks, Jim. You amaze me.

And if that wasn't enough, the circus celebrated, too! With my favorite take-out Thai food, milk for the girls, and red wine for grown ups, we had a birthday feast. We finished it off with gifts and some ice cream cupcakes. I didn't cook a thing or clean a plate, and I enjoyed every last bit of the food and my laziness. My family totally outdid themselves!

So much for ignoring my birthday!