The Day of the Giant Red Bee (a photoblog)

Woog had his first birthday party at age two. It took his mother nearly a year to prepare: drawing up a concept, filling out the guest list, planning the food, games and decorations, scouring wholesale shops for novelty items to hang from the pabitins and fill the piñatas with. It was a payday to payday struggle, with a then employment-challenged Atch dutifully chauffering me around on the weekends and patiently carting my purchases, but we made it. And Woog had a memorable birthday blast that was talked about in the months that followed.

By contrast, the joint birthday party we held for the boys (Woog 11 days into his sixth year, Eli 22 days short of his second) took me less than three weeks to arrange. Funny what slightly more money, slightly more children, and considerably less free time will do to your planning stage. Still, the kids had fun, and Eli was especially ecstatic. The cheapest clown I could find (“that's hilarious,” Atch guffawed, “the cheapest clown! Imagine someone callling you cheap, and you're a clown!”) was fortunately un-cheesy, the food overflowed, the games were loudly energetic (even the grown-ups got to play), and the giant red bee was a hit:

The invite

The tarp. Took nearly half a blasted day to assemble
their favorite characters and do the lay-out concept.

The cake

The cheapest clown. Meet Anderson and his balloons animals.
One of the gamest clowns ever, despite Woog clobbering his
brightly-colored loins with a rubber mallet. Ow.

Anderson in action

Eli and Mom

Fine dining manners

Piglets at the trough

The Bee! It's the Bee!

Where you been all my life?

Eli's first love is not his mother.

Say what, grampa?

The geriatric and the pediatric

Don't worry, Eli, I'll blow the candles, you go ahead and hug the Bee.

The boys and the Bee

Pabitin frenzy

Grown ups in a frenzy. Tore all the crepe to shreds, too. Tsk.

Mom, look what I got!

Bee, look what I got!

The Bee stings the piñata

It's a Battle B-Daman! Yehey!

Bee photo op

Eli, Bee, and the grandparents

Buzzing with the bee

It rained a bit which meant that less than half of the guest list turned out. Either that, or we unwisely scheduled the party for Father's Day. In any case, we had a ton of food left over and Atch grouched about the waste. When we got home, we gave plates of spaghetti, barbecue and sandwiches to the neighbors, and carted the rest over to Atch's hometown of Valladolid, 31 kilometers away away. We'd learned that very same day of the passing of Tatay Ponyong, his late aunt's husband, and knowing how hard-up that branch of the family was, the food certainly came in handy at the wake. Not a waste, Atch, never a waste. It was meant to be.

On the rainy drive back home, the kids slept, still fully dressed in their birthday outfits. Atch and I exchanged an ancient weary glance. We'd forgotten how tiring and back-achy hosting a children's party was, even more so now we were older and had less energy than the usual. “This is the second to the last party,” Atch declared, “the boys can have another one when Eli turns four or so, but that's it.”

Mmmm-hmmm, I think I might have yawned. That'd be about it. I felt a sense of accomplishment, like a dutiful tick mark made on a checklist of things-to-do. And while my excitement didn't reach the level of the last one, this party was made more meaningful by the happy smiles on the faces of my boys, and the relief it brought to those who needed it.

But thank Lordy it'll be a while until I have to conjure up the next party. It'll take just about that long for me to recover.