Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Celebrating 7 Years as a Mommy

My oldest son is turning 7 on Friday!
To say his birth was life-changing would be a vast understatement. I was 36 years old had been living on my own for more than ten years and in a committed, but not domestic relationship with his father (we each had our own home about 30 min apart).
Prior to the birth, I had the optomistic expectation that I'd have this baby and life would pretty much continue as normal; and that I'd deliver natrually, nurse my baby and have the time and energy during my brief (6-8 week) maternity leave to plan a "mid-summer's eve" wedding.
Well, I had a cesarean section and my breastmilk never came in. I spent several weeks/months trying to breast & bottle feed - which took most of my time and energy and never really worked anyway.
There were many times in the first two months that I looked at this little crying or cooing bundle in my arms and wondered how I'd ever survive to his adulthood.
Blessedly, he did start sleeping from about 11pm-5am at about 2 months. I took the night feeding and his daddy took the daybreak feeding and we both got enough sleep so that we had the energy in July to start to plan for a September 6 wedding. And that little angel who we shared our love and committment with on that September day, loved us so much, that he started sleeping from 7pm to 5am shortly after.
By December we figured we had the parent thing down pat and were ready to think about having another....but that's another story.

This boy has had a history of wanting very active and involved birthdays (he and his mommy that is). Two Blue's Clues parties at 3 and 4, a CARS party at 5, an INCREDIBLE Super-hero party at 6, and this year...we're doing WALL-E....or rather "RRRON-E". It is a rather elaborate party as described below:

“RRRon-E’s Eco-Adventure” at (Our Local) Park will feature the following:

Letterboxing:
An outdoor adventure pastime started in England.
See www.letterboxing.org or www.atlasquest.org for more info.

We will have 3 letterboxes hidden at the park – the “box” will be old wipes containers re-purposed for containing a hidden stamp kit (Stamp, stamp pad, pen and logbook).

Each child will receive an “adventure kit” which will include their own personal initial stamp carved from a wine cork…Decoder ring from milk & oj carton tabs and a couple other things…. The kit will be contained in cleaned out, cut down milk cartons covered with old road maps with a strap threaded through so it can be carried over their shoulders…
Following the party, we will be hiding the party letterboxes in other local parks; if you are interested in continuing the adventure look for them at the above websites in May/June timeframe or email and I’ll provide a clue-sheet.

Wall-E style relay races:
*A race with a plant in a shoe
*Trash/treasure hunt
(The kids will be given child-sized gardening gloves that they can take home with them)
And More

Hot-Dogs and cupcakes will be served on recyclable or re-usable plates and don’t require utensils
Chip bags & drink pouches will be recycled through terracycle.net
All will be bulk-purchased to reduce packaging waste…

Old cereal/cracker boxes will be turned inside-out, decorated and used for goodie bags.

RRR = Reduce/Recycle/Reuse
RRRon-E’s adventure will be doing that in the following ways:
Reduce waste:
Buying party food in bulk reduces the amount of trash created
Not purchasing single-use goodie bags
Not using disposable plates & utensils; using a multi-use table coverings instead of single use party table coverings

Recycle:
Chip bags and drink pouches will be recycled through terracycle a New Jersey business I support through brigade collections. For more information see www.TerraCycle.net.

The goodie boxes are recyclable cardboard/paper. Please place them in your household recycling when your child is done with them.

Re-Use:
Wipe-containers will be reused as our letterboxes
Plates
Milk-cartons; pull tabs, corks, old roadmaps and cereal/cracker boxes

Both the Adventure kits and the cereal/cracker box goodie bags were ideas inspired by Maya*Made.

I'll try to post some photos of both the party and the craft projects.

Happy Birthday Ronnie! I hope your birthday party is as fun and exciting to live through as it has been to plan for.

Post Script...
Over the last few silent months I had planned many a post that obviously became less important than the day-to-day workings of our lives as a family.
I hope to fill in the blanks over the next few months, but I make no promises.
I have been a hap-hazzard blogger at best, and when life is as full as it is at the moment I can't commit to a daily or even weekly edition.
I HOPE to continue to write so that I have a record of my thoughts and life's goings on...
Blessed Be

1 comment:

KrisMrsBBradley said...

Happy Birthday, Ronnie!!