House arrest, house party

Day 4 – (for parents) What has most surprised you about parenthood?

Both- We never thought we would feel so trapped.  We knew that our schedules would change, but We never thought that we’d have a kid whose nighttime sleeping habits would keep us confined to home at 7pm every night or whose napping habits would restrict outings to less than an hour’s drive away and then confined to home from noon-ish to 3ish.

We always saw babies and children out and about.  Napping in the stroller or car,  playing outside or eating at 8pm.  Now on the occasions that we’re out past 7pm and we see such a thing we’re honestly stunned.  HOW is that child awake and functional?  For example, we will be at home for the 4th of July this year and there are fireworks at dark in a park within walking distance.  But we won’t be going, because “dark” in the summer is WAY past his bed time.

Day 5 -What do you prefer to do on your birthday? If you have children, what do you prefer to do for their birthday?

Nutella- I am a social person.  My ideal birthday celebration is a night out for a good meal with a group of friends.  It must be somewhere we can hear each other talk.  When it comes to presents, I’m easy to please.  Sparkly things, luxury items that I won’t buy for myself, and experiences such as theatre tickets.

Strawberry- I prefer to be on vacation on my birthday, or to receive a getaway as a present. I definitely prefer to have the company of Nutella, a sitter for Curly, and it depends on what I’m doing if I’d like friends around. My birthday is always celebrated on Memorial Day weekend, so sometimes it’s hard to get a group of friends together because lots of people are out of town. For my most recent birthday, I was able to get a couple of friends to have dinner with us in the city and we had a sitter at home. It was a lot of fun having a good meal, chatting and drinking…I definitely like lower key parties for the most part. I was a little sad about not getting to travel though, which is harder now that Curly is in the picture. For gifts, I like books, music and gift cards, but I’m totally not materialistic so presents aren’t a big deal.

For Curly, we ended up doing big family-packed outdoor parties both years, but that is NOT what we want to do moving forward.  Ideally, we’d want a low key party with a few kids his age.  We like to do themes and Nutella loves to party plan, make favors, and bake. We do love celebrating birthdays and look forward to fulfilling Curly’s wishes in the future when he has more of an opinion about what he wants. And when he turns 5, we want to surprise him with a trip to Disney World.