I love pajamas. Who doesn’t look forward to coming home from work, stripping off the pantyhose and high-heeled shoes, slipping into some thick wool socks, and pulling the comfy cotton, elastic-waistband pajamas over her legs? So when I saw the article in Parents magazine about a pajama-themed birthday party, I just couldn’t resist asking Mythili if she wanted to have it. Finally, an excuse to wear pajamas “in public!” And the adorable and “easy to make” bed cakes would be a hit with all the kids, not to mention the puffy-painting of socks and the musical pillows and hot potato games. I had it all planned out in my mind…
As plans of the future form, reality never sets in until the night before the party. We had already done the dirty work–vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing the toilets. I had already made two separate trips to the grocery store to buy the multitude of cookie and food coloring supplies (not just Nilla Wafers, oh no! I needed $5-a-box pirouettes for the bed posts, sandwich cookies for the headboards, and marshmallows for the bodies), not to mention appetizers and pumpkin for the adults’ dessert. I had even already baked the cakes and frosting from scratch on Thursday night. So was I prepared?
I didn’t take into account that three little girls would be fighting over spreading the white frosting for the sheet, or breaking the marshmallows in half, or smashing the Nilla wafers onto the beds. Even after Bruce tucked them away, I was up for another hour or so, squeezing frosting out of my brand-new-and-already-broken cake decorating tube (damn those school fundraisers!), trying to get the “bedposts” to stay. But, alas, despite the lack of heart-shaped mouths and multicolored melted candies for the blanket (I was barely able to melt one set of Laffy-Taffies, there was no way I was going to try and combine colors!), I completed the beds before ten o’clock.
And the next morning I was at it again, rolling out dough for two pumpkin pies, whipping up meringue for one of them, taping up streamers and blowing up balloons.
It may sound crazy, and it probably is, but I never really got to have a birthday party when I was growing up, and certainly not one as complex as this. I wanted to make the day special for Mythili, to give her more than a gift, to give her a memory that she could keep in her heart forever.
So when the guests started pouring in and the 4-year-olds started pouring puffy paint all over their pajamas (Mythili’s, of course, were brand new) and the floor, I just had to let it go. The kids had a blast playing musical pillows and taking turns “running the music.” They were thrilled to see that the hot potato really was a HOT potato, and when things started winding down, we headed upstairs to decimate the beautiful cakes. With four candles sticking out of Mythili’s in the only soft (Laffy-Taffy free) places we could find, a chorus of children and adults sang “Happy Birthday,” and Mythili’s eyes lit up brighter than a million stars.
Was it worth it? By then, I’d been in my pajamas for hours. I took a sip of wine with a piece of the only pumpkin pie that survived (maybe the meringue wasn’t the brightest idea) and watched as cake piece after cake piece got tossed in the trash and child after child ran to play on the backyard playground. At least I was wearing my pajamas, and I could relax and enjoy their joy.
