Andy pauses for a post-fete photo with his Auntie Diane and cousin Julia.
It could’ve been a frat party: Beer bottles everywhere. Stained clothes on the floor. Chips ground into the rug. People napping on the carpet. Oh, and a dirty diaper beneath my bed. (OK, maybe a nursing-home kegger.)
In fact, this was the scene at Andy’s totally fantastic first birthday party. When I told older people (my co-worker, my mom) about Andy’s party plans, they were sort of … shocked. “Don’t you know the rule?” my colleague laughed. “The number of guests should correspond to the baby’s age!” Which means I should have invited one person to Andy’s party. Instead I invited 50.
Brian and I love having big parties. Well, I do, once I get past the hives-inducing anxiety induced by frantic Swiffering and dusting. And Brian secretly does, too — he cooked for about 60 people at his grad school graduation party, hunched over his prized fryer and producing his miraculously deliciously disgusting deep-fried chicken wings.
So we thought nothing of inviting 50 of Andy’s nearest and dearest to our abode for a Saturday afternoon soiree. We’re lucky that most of our family lives nearby, and a lot of our friends do, too. Unluckily, our house isn’t exactly designed for sweeping fetes. Nonetheless, I adorned our porch with a massive Pooh Bear balloon and procured all manner of Pooh Bear decorations from Party Needs in Waltham, which has the distinction of housing bachelorette party leatherwear and Thomas the Tank Engine paper plates in the same aisle.
When the party first got underway, I was panicked because nobody had arrived. I felt exceedingly pathetic and tried to assure the few stragglers who had arrived that things would get exciting really soon, all while foisting upon them platters of haphazardly cut cheese. Andy, happily oblivious, was munching on his hand.
Then, suddenly, it seemed everyone crowded the door at once. With children. Sticky, unwieldy, cute, energetically mobile children. I immediately retreated to my bedroom with a large glass of wine, cursing my ineptitude. Where was I going to put them all? I guess I figured that people would spill onto the porch, but instead everyone wanted to congregrate–naturally–around the dining room table, near Brian’s artfully arranged platter of deli meat. What if people were too hot? What if there wasn’t enough beer? What if an overzealous two-year-old disrobed on my Oriental rug? Crap.
Then something amazing happened. People began to fend for themselves! Parents took their babies into Andy’s room to play. A few older people made their way to the quiet of the porch. The older kids discovered the pleasures of our garden hose and began dousing one another in the backyard. Others chatted vivaciously on the sofa.
Most importantly, Andy was having a ball. (Andy! Right! The reason I’d spent $200 on obscenely ugly Eeyore paper plates!) Every time I peeked at him, a different friend or relative was toting him around, cooing. At one point he was bouncing up and down in the center of a circle of babies, stroking their faces and squealing. He loved every minute — until it was time for cake. I began to bellow like a gym teacher and got everyone to crowd around the dining room table. I hauled Andy’s high chair into the doorway and strapped him in. Brian ceremoniously cut the birthday cake, which his Aunt Joy had made specially for him. We handed Andy a plate and began to sing.
And he began to shriek, flinging his dessert to and fro. His hair was more frosted than Debbie Gibson’s circa 1988. And so, like any confident host, he waved goodbye and retreated to the calm of his bedroom, settling down for a nice long nap while the party carried on without him.
