Happy Birthday, Cosi!

Our little Cosette—Cosi, as we like to call her—turned one over the weekend! When people hear about all we did to celebrate, they’re going to wonder how much it cost. As if pure joy and celebration could be taken apart and budgeted like a damn work party.

Just know that when it comes to our children’s birthdays, my wife and I have been blessed to be able to do things up right, but even if we hadn’t been blessed, we’d still do things up right, no matter the cost, especially for first birthdays, which my wife and I both agree are the most important.

After all, a person may live to be a hundred, heck, may live, given future advancements in technology and medicine, to be two hundred years old—but of all those birthdays, only one is a person’s first.  And though our babies may not remember their firsts, dang it, we will! That’s our philosophy.

The day started with Dad’s Famous Breakfast for Birthday Girls, which no one got up for.

Then we were off, first to Perky’s Farm, or something like that, where the kids got to sit in a tractor wheel. And don’t think we got in for free, because we didn’t!

Then, for a very expensive hourly fee, which only enriched the sacrifice we were making as parents to celebrate our child’s life, we rode in a paddleboat.

After the paddleboat we took time for some face painting, even rode horses, both very expensive, yet somehow rewarding—gratifying, that’s the word—to be able to pay for it all.

After the tractor wheel and the paddleboat and the face painting and the horse rides, we were off through a corn maze, that again we had to pay for, person by person, the total cost of the celebration increasing by the hour, as well as my own sense of fulfillment, of satisfaction (increasing, that is).

Then we visited the zoo, and I’m so glad we did. If the children loved the wheel, they loved the animals even more!

After the zoo we went to Disneyland. Then we walked through a weird castle. Then we went on a nature walk.

By then it was getting late. So our stop at a National Park was hardly more than that—a stop—time enough to climb a giant pile of Paleolithic sandstone and pose for a picture.

We must have looked like complete tourists just then—parking the car, posing for the camera, and then back into the car and driving away. But this was our baby’s birthday, so screw people who can’t mind their own business!

Then we had to pull over because the older kids saw a rock wall and wanted to climb it. Cry, cry, cry, the whiners get whatever they want, especially on a day like this, and they know it. So we stopped.

Then we were home and all the extended family came over, presents piled like bricks, only a lot bigger than bricks, all the way up to the ceiling. Grandma made her famous strawberry and cream thingy that she only makes for birthdays.

Everyone was having a good time, I felt like it had been a full day, and so with what little daylight remained, I went into the backyard and put in the french drain I’d been meaning to install.

Happy birthday, Cosi, a great, great time had by all, even if I had to put in the french drain, but at least we got to do some cool things before that. Once you’re old enough to remember all this, don’t you forget it!