what ambition looks like, part three: a birthday crown

both the girl and the boy celebrate a birthday this month. 

and as with many other parents before me, i am fervently committed to making each of my children's birthday celebrations as intimate and special as possible. 


i don't believe that this necessarily means throwing a large party and making up loot bags. 

i've attended many of these parties and nice as they are, i think that there needs to be room for a moment to be had with just the immediate family, and most importantly, a deliberately arranged "event" between the parents and the child that profoundly changed their lives on the day they were born: with eye contact and shared reflection. because i truly believe that birthdays are about parents and their children. that the children should be celebrated on the day the were born, and that their parents take a moment to recall the miracle they brought forward and how their family has evolved together.

i don't know if this brand of birthday magic is always possible, especially as my children grow older - or even as young as they are, for that matter. 

and so the plan is to make birthday magic with the simplest of traditions: with a letter i plan to write to them each year, to be read together for as long as they will allow; a cake i will always bake from scratch - the details of which they get to choose as they grow older;  and a crown they get to wear, to reign sovereign over the events of their special day.

the boy already has his crown. the girl has got to have one too.

and just in case i have not already proven myself a bit mad with all the making and the dreaming, not only have i just been nominated and elected as a member of the board for the co-op in which we live, i am adamant that the girl will be wearing this birthday crown, yet unassembled, on her first birthday next friday.

do wish me luck. i think i might need it.