I am an only child. As a result, I have many strengths (confidence being one), however sharing is not one of them. I love my birthday and I am especially miserly about it. So much so that I resent turkey simply because every few years my birthday falls on Thanksgiving. A candle in a slice of pumpkin pie is my own personal nightmare. I believe birthdays should be about “you” (not turkey and stuffing). It’s a hell of a lot easier to accept “it’s not always about you” if occasionally it is.
When our first son was born, he was my excuse to indulge in all things birthday and I was committed to making his birthdays exceptional. Not to toot my own horn (that’s what we only children do), but I’ve done a pretty good job of it. To date, I’ve hosted toddler-style Olympics, founded Camp Knut, sailed the high seas with jolly bucaneers, celebrated Dia de los Muertos, and concocted potions with Mad Scientists. His parties had cakes, balloons, punch, games, presents, the whole nine and first and foremost, they were all about him.
Call it karma, fate, or just plain hilarious, but I (Ms. Birthdays aren’t for sharing) now have triplets and they have to SHARE their BIRTHDAY. It’s difficult for me to put the words BIRTHDAY and SHARE in the same sentence. Clearly, I am way out of my element. So this is my plea. To all Moms of Multiples with more experience than me (a large number) and moms with a better grasp of etiquette than me (an even larger number): please help me navigate a birthday for three.
How can I make them all feel special at the same time? Is that even possible?
Do we sing Happy Birthday to each one? Or say all three names really fast at the end?
Can I let them pick another day? Half birthday?
How do I handle it if they don’t want a joint party?
If they do have a joint party, how do we keep the number of attendees and cost reasonable?
What if they have the same group of friends, is it overkill to have them at more than one party?
How can I appropriately handle gifts that are well-intended, but not well-considered for multiples e.g. too matchy, not at all equal, gifts for one and not all, or group gifts that aren’t easily shared?
I struggle picking out gifts from mom and dad. Is there a magic way to guide others on what’s appropriate for multiples?
Is there a way to delicately handle individuals who lavish gifts on our singleton and not our multiples?
Thus far, I’ve enjoyed the bliss of birthday ignorance, but those days are numbered. This year, my boys think it’s their birthday every time we sing Happy Birthday.
“No it not, it my birthday.”
You can imagine their reaction when I break it to them that they have to share their actual birthday with two other people. So please, share your wisdom, calm my fears, and bring back my love of birthdays. Whether it’s a comment, a letter, a tweet or horror story of what not to do, anything would be better than my current residence in Cluelessville.
Thank you in advance, I will wait for your replies by pinning many, many birthday ideas.
4 comments
I feel like we are kindred spirits. Only child, check, birthday around a holiday, check, mother of triplets and a singleton, check! I have this issue and have been worrying about the same thing!
Erin, then I guessing you’ll struggle with this one too. So far I’ve gotten recommendations to celebrate together on birthday and individually on their coming home day. Also, that this might be more my issue than theirs. I’ll post more as I learn.
This is hilarious! Tough, my goodness! The coming home day is a great idea, I would say one on one time would be good…hard to do with all of them, but I think kids love that! Great post!
Wow, the same question I asked my sister who sent me this link. I only have twins, and here is what I have done up to this point (they will be 7 next month). A family birthday party with a cake for each child, and take turns singing happy birthday (or have them pick a number-the closest to the one I selected get sung to first).
This is the first year we are having a “friends” birthday. What I settled on is a single birthday party (even though they are boy/girl they share a lot of friends through sports, pre-K/K, neighbors, etc). The party is from 1-4 where we are playing a lot of games with prizes, having 2 piñatas (1 for each theme), other fun activities and then having cake from 3-4 where our families are also invited, and then having dinner for family members. Not sure how it is all going to work out, especially the My Little Pony meets Star Wars theme, but at the end of the day they will both be happy since they don’t have to choose who gets to invite Josie or Hailee or Dustin to their party. If there birthdays were in summer it would be easy to do this at the park. We live in a smaller town, about 25 minutes to any activities and couldn’t transport more than 1 friend each if we did something outside of town.