A Promise Kept

With parenthood, comes planning. Lots and lots of planning. Lists and lists full of stuff you have to do, stuff you'd like to do, and stuff you dream about but suspect will never materialize.

In the Burt home, a majority of Andy's planning falls into the middle category, while my own purview lies among the extremes. This means I am great at making -- and keeping -- doctor's appointments and dreaming up giant summer vacations, but that at any given moment, fifty-plus percent of my efforts are in vain, thanks to nap times and budgets and scheduling conflicts and temperaments and, and, and.

This also means that my oldest has, sadly, grown accustomed to big promises with a much smaller payoff. Like when, just this Monday, I loaded the kids, our 64-pack of crayons and a pad of art paper into the car to drive to the campus art museum (which is featuring artwork from thousands of local school kids), where I had planned for the kids to wander through the walls of kiddie-sized art and then head outside to make their own mini masterpieces. Turns out the museum is closed on Mondays, so we rolled down the a big grassy hill just outside the museum and hunted for pine cones instead.

But I digress...our five-year-old (still so crazy that he is so old!) has had his share of disappointment, thanks to a mom with very poor timing. I feel bad about this all the time. In fact, I often catch myself throwing ideas out into the air without any consideration of reality, only to find out that the ever-attentive Porter has carefully memorized every detail of said dream and will later hold me accountable for the fact that we never snuck those snow cones into the movie that had already been bumped out of rotation in our two-theater town.

All of this is my very wordy way of saying, simply, I want to give my kids the world but more often than not come up short.

But I refuse to stop scheming. Because sometimes it really is everything we imagined. And I am oh so grateful that on my oldest's actual birth day (and just two days after I had to tell him we'd postponed his birthday party because none of his friends would be in town over Easter weekend), we lucked our way into perfect.

The rain was even kind enough to hold off until after we'd left for the day.

What started as a low-key but happy morning of new toys and Porter's favorite cereal,

Turned into a dream birthday when a quick trip to pick up our bake-at-home pizza and ice cream pizza cake revealed a traveling carnival on the other side of town.

So I hightailed it back to the house and asked Porter if he wanted to go on a birthday adventure. Dubious, as he rightly should have been given my track record, he wasn't sure if he wanted to leave the new cargo plane and Matchbox cars. But enthusiasm rules when it comes to kids, and I was most certainly enthused. In one fell swoop, all the rescheduled promises were forgotten with his first glimpse of the Fanny Flyer (in truth, he was fine with the rescheduled party, but I felt bad because the last minuteness of it -- as RSVPs came in -- meant I had not planned any other birthday hoopla).

 

And, as all good perfect days go, the rest does not require much explanation.

He loved being in charge of the tickets and counting out just enough for each ride.

He got mad every time I tried to take the wheel on the bumper cars (just a few inches too short to go it alone).

Could have watched the brave souls on the Kamikaze for hours (though he made it very clear that he would NEVER want to go on it -- "not even when I'm old like you."

And made my heart stop every time he shifted or took a deep breath at the top of the ferris wheel (I didn't remember that they didn't have seatbelts -- the things I never noticed before I had kids).


Luckily, Look Mommy, no hands! was quickly followed by a slight wind gust that brought him back to his normally cautious demeanor.

We left in the very best of birthday moods and with dirty feet for me (what was I thinking wearing flip flops?) and big smears of dirt all over Porter's face that are most certainly indicative of a great day for a five-year-old boy.

A nice reminder that the tallied mommy guilt of unfulfilled ice cream bribes and trips to the park at dinnertime should be taken in stride.

Because it would not be nearly as magic if every day felt like a fifth birthday.