Another Underwhelming Covid Birthday

So, yes, Luke turned four! But, it was during “coronavirus times.” So, it was underwhelming. As expected. Miryam had a lovely birthday in February 2020, pre-covid-panic. Justin had the first pandemic birthday, and I managed to actually take a photo of his birthday angel food cake this year, but otherwise it was not particularly exciting. Cecily’s birthday went like this (not as planned). My birthday was downright depressing (here is the link to the explanation of that, but don’t click it if you want to stay cheerful today).

Luke’s birthday remained. A couple months ago, I had dazzling dreams of his festivities. Maybe we would invite the whole preschool class (all seven of them) with one parent each to a little backyard gathering with cake and balloons. But with winter–the South Texans are quite wimpy about the “cold,” and even I have gotten more wimpy about it as I’ve moved further south–and the Covid cases rising, those hopes were forgotten. So, we planned to have a regular old Covid Birthday. He would take prepackaged cupcakes with him to school to share with his class; we would wear our masks to the hibachi grill he wanted for his birthday dinner; I would make the cake of his choosing (chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and sprinkles) for dessert; we would finally go visit the NASA Space Center over the weekend. What could possibly go wrong?

The day before his birthday, on the way home from preschool, Justin took him to the grocery store to pick out cupcakes to bring the next day. Homemade treats aren’t allowed for sharing. The cupcakes tantalized the children from their countertop perch the rest of the evening. Justin and I were craving dessert that night, so I made some brownies, even though I knew I would be making chocolate-on-chocolate cake the next day. Justin doesn’t like most chocolate (brownies and chocolate chip cookies are the exceptions. I don’t get it. Weirdo! lol), and I wanted something sweet right now anyway, so brownies meant Justin would have something to celebrate with Luke, without touching the chocolate cake. Everything seemed just fine.

On Thursday morning, Miryam went to school, Luke got ready for school, and I cleaned up lingering messes in the kitchen so I’d have a clean slate for cake-baking and -decorating once the morning bustle was over. I stole a shower while Justin was still home to keep Cecily from following me. After I was dressed, I noticed I’d missed a call from Miryam’s school. It was the vice principal. She requested that I call her back.

I asked Justin to load up Luke and Cecily while I called the school. One was buckled up already, and the other was being hoisted in, when I came out to the minivan with the news. One of Miryam’s classmates had reported a positive Covid test, so we needed to pick her up, and she and her entire class would be distance-learning for the next week-ish.

Set Cecily back on the ground. Unbuckle Luke. Go pick up Miryam. Return packed lunches and the box of cupcakes to the kitchen. Call Luke’s school to explain his absence. Call Luke’s doctor to reschedule his 4-year check up. Mentally postpone our outing to NASA. Text family to let them know what we’re up to (which is now absolutely nothing). Play outside. Finish cleaning up the kitchen. Figure out how to get Miryam logged in to the online learning portals and apps she would need the next day and next week. Give up on the idea of making a whole cake: we had a dozen cupcakes and no one to share them with now, and still the brownies from the night before. Go on a bike ride/walk. Improvise dinner: make taco soup by dumping cans upon cans and a couple packets of things into the crockpot. Improvise birthday candles: apparently I didn’t keep any when we moved, so he got to blow out my “bahama breeze” Yankee Candle candle that I keep above the kitchen sink, instead.

It was so underwhelming.

And yet.

It was kind of fun.

We got lots of outside time. I didn’t have to rush anybody anywhere. Luke didn’t get exhausted from his third day in a row of preschool, which is what usually happens on Thursdays. I didn’t get to make cake, but I didn’t have to make cake, so I could focus on quality time with both Luke (birthday boy, he needs love) and Miryam (when she gets loved on, she’s sweeter to everyone, including the birthday brother). And heck, the kids were both home, so we got to play and read together and eat cupcakes twice a day and still have our Advent calendar chocolate at the end of the day, and it actually turned out just fine.

I suppose it doesn’t always have to be a party. Luke is pretty go-with-the-flow. He didn’t complain that we didn’t end up going to the “fire restaurant” for his dinner. On the contrary, he declared that “CareBear’s taco soup” (my mom had left the ingredients to make it with me when she and my dad visited the week before) was “the best soup ever,” and asked for seconds, which he never does, except to mac’n’cheese and dessert. Luke is a little more introverted than Miryam and hardly seemed to notice that he didn’t have a house full of friends to celebrate with him. He had Mommy and Daddy and two sisters to sing to him, and a mouth full of blue icing, and he got to open a present and blow out a candle.

Luke actually seemed to love how his birthday went! So I can’t complain about it, either. It certainly wasn’t “as planned.” But it was sweet and fun. And relatively low-stress! So there you have it. Another 2020 birthday.

Tell me in the comments below: what’s something that didn’t go “as planned” this year, but that you ended up enjoying anyway?