The Big Birthday Countdown.

by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor (Make Mine A Double)

Elby will be five on November 12th, which in case you weren’t aware is “only a few weeks away and a week is seven days – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday – that’s a week!” Every day it seems Elby and I need to go over her “birthday list.” This is a compilation of all the things she’s seen on commercials that she now really really wants but knows she can’t have except for a special occasion. This is my fault because normally everything she watches is grouped methodically on TiVo and doled out in small doses one Lazytown at a time. But once in awhile TiVo times out and suddenly an episode of Hannah Montana has just ended and Elbs is yelling from the other room, “Mama! I want this! Mama! Hurry!” and this turns out to be something called Moonsand. “It’s revolutionary, Mama! It never dries out.” On the one hand, this toy costs like thirty bucks but on the other hand, before you judge, at least she’s learned the word 'revolutionary,' right?

Bigger than my problem of all the toys she wants for her birthday is what exactly we’re going to do to honor her special day. Five is a big one. Jon and I got away with no birthday party for her first birthday because we jointly decided that people who throw a party for their one-year-old are either mentally deranged or have a lot of money they need taken off their hands. When her second birthday rolled around and we noticed that she didn’t have the language skills yet to ask “what are we doing for my birthday” we took that as an invitation to just invite some of our own friends over to celebrate making it through two-years (presents were welcome –especially if those presents were alcohol related). By the time Elby turned three, I was only six-weeks out from bringing twins into the world (as it turned out I was two-weeks out but I didn’t know it then) so we decided to have another little shindig at our house but I threw up a Dora themed “Fiesta” sign and some Dora plates and hats, made a batch of cupcakes and invited five or six of her friends to party along with the adults. Elby had a fantastic time but I ended up in the hospital on bed rest a few days later. Obviously I blame her.

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Raising preemie twin girls plus a sassy preschooler while trying to make a book deadline isn't for wussies. In her  Mommy Tracked column, Make Mine a Double, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor takes imperfect parenting to an art form. Each week she breaks the pristine laws of the mommy manuals as she reveals how she attempts to parent her three children through instinct, intelligence, and a lot of trial and error.  She is the author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, Naptime Is the New Happy Hour, and It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman. She’s appeared numerous times on The Today Show, is a member of the Us Weekly Fashion Police and writes on her blog, Baby On Bored.