Happy half-birthday to you...happy half-birthday to you...

Due to extremely poor planning on the part of his otherwise doting and thoughtful parents, the Bee was born on Christmas Eve. It's very hard to have a good birthday party on Christmas Eve, or even on the weekend before. Everyone's out of town for the holidays, has company visiting, has half a dozen other parties that day already, is spending it with family, etc. Personally, I also think it's cruel to make a little kid wait a whole year to get toys, then get all the presents he's going to get for a year in the span of two days. M thinks it would be funny (in his sick mind) to let the Bee choose: you can open your presents on your birthday and the batteries on Christmas, or vice versa -- you choose! While on the surface that looks like a terrific Parenting with Love & Logic choices thing, something about it just doesn't seem right to me...

So this year, we started a new tradition: the half-birthday. We waited until age 3.5 to start this, because, well, he just didn't "get" birthdays before this. He definitely got it this time (except for the "half" part of the birthday party & not actually being four yet...you may wish to review my Why you shouldn't argue with a preschooler post for the backstory on this one).

So this afternoon, we had a big BD bash with eight other kids and about 20 adults. There was a dinosaur theme -- dinosaur cake, dinosaur plates & napkins, dinosaur-themed goody bags for the guests, you get the picture...Snacks, juiceboxes, etc. for the kids, margaritas for the grownups. We put out the kiddie pool & borrowed a bounce house from some friends. It was a rager!

The favorite gifts (today; subject to change at any time without notice; god help you if you offer up yesterday's favorite gift tomorrow): a Razor scooter & pads, a giant tub of legos, a walking roaring dinosaur, and a go-fish game that doesn't even have batteries yet. Still apparently quite a hoot.

Being the rotten parents that we are (who would plan so poorly as to give a kid a Christmas Eve birthday party?!), we only took two pictures. And as a matter of fact, we didn't even take these; a friend took them. I saw a few other digital cameras around, so I'm hoping someone else will email me some pictures. Until then, you'll have to make do with these two of the Bee & his friend L playing in the pool.