a simple birthday for our three-year-old

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Today Lily turns three years old. Wow. I've been a mom for three years! And my babygirl is not a baby anymore. Of course, I knew that, she's potty trained and goes to daycare and is very precocious, and heck, she's the eldest of three kids, but still. THREE. YEARS. OLD. Seems like old. Anyway, since she goes to daycare on Tuesdays, and since Brad's day off is Monday, we celebrated yesterday. She doesn't know the difference anyway ;)

Guys, we had such a great day! In all, we spent about $5 and it was the most fun we've had as a family in a while. Lily kept saying "Happy birthday Lily! Happy birthday Oli!" (his birthday is most certainly not August 20th, but hey.) and was clearly reveling in the day.

And let me just say, if kiddie birthday parties are your thing, then do it up! If you enjoy celebrating to the nines for your little one, I don't think that's wrong or bad in the least. It's just not what we've ever done and we're loving the stress-free, inexpensive, family-focused birthdays that we've done for our kids the last three years. Some day we will very likely do the whole big gift, invite your friends, loot bags, decorations, tons of food thing. But not today - when they can't remember it and when their best friends all have the last name Morrice.

So here's how we celebrated:

Lily woke up to a huge balloon. It might as well have been a brick of solid gold, she was so excited. I guess balloons are a rare occurrence? Not that I ever really intended this, but it's not like we play with them at home - they're only at parties and celebrations. So she thought it was awesome and played with nothing else all morning. Oli got one too and they had a ball.

They ate a ton of fruit for breakfast to get ready for a day filled with junk food. This was mostly to soothe my conscience :) After the kids each had a whole plum, whole pear, and lots of cantaloup, we made pink cupcakes with purple icing and the kids split one before bed. Another big deal in her books.

The kids and I napped until 1pm, then our whole family went to the public kiddie pool. Brad has never been with us to the kiddie pool and I've only been a couple of times this summer. It was super crowded for a week day, but the kiddie section is amazing and admission is free so it was the perfect thing to do on such a beautiful day. We played and splashed all together for over an hour, then headed to the nearby park for some swing time. A few times throughout the day I got mad at myself for not having my phone to take pictures of us all, but then I reminded myself to just BE THERE in the present, and that was better in the end.

After the park, we went to another neighbourhood for ice cream (hoping to finally introduce Brad to Kem Coba - famous in these parts!) but the place was closed so we ended up just getting the kids a cold treat at a Dépanneur on the way home. It was the only time we spent money and the kids were equally thrilled with sharing an ice cream sandwich as they would have been with Kem Coba, though I noticed the difference!

As far as gifts, we haven't really bought Lily anything for her birthday. Just last week I spent about $50 on her Fall/Winter/4T clothes for the year and we just assembled an IKEA table and chairs set that was still in the box from Christmas (oops!), so she's been loving all things new recently. She doesn't need anything else and we don't have room for more toys at the moment. Plus if anything, we're further simplifying (story of my life!) these days as we prepare for baby3 to join Lily and Oli in their room and closet. My parents bought her pink sparkly Toms which she is very excited about though :)

In the end, it was the perfect family day for us, and the birthday girl had an incredible time. We celebrated her, sang to her several times, made much of her, and spent isolated, phone-free time as a family for hours on end. There was nowhere we needed to be and no one we needed to accommodate, except together and ourselves. It was awesome. Happy birthday Lilypie!

How do you do kiddie birthdays?

I'm sure we'll change our game plan as the years pass!