The only thing my soon-to-be-four year old wants for his birthday this year is a piñata.
A piñata sounds great to me. But all the stuff that comes with it? Not so much.
Renting a birthday venue
Sending out invites
Planning the food
Buying balloons
Ordering a cake
All the setup.
All the clean up
I’m getting sweaty and anxious just thinking about it. That’s basically my body’s way of saying, “oh hell no.” And I’m determined to listen to it.
I texted two of my mama friends this predicament: How to let him have his piñata…without setting myself to pull together a party when I know I don’t want to be doing that?
We talked about asking his daycare teacher if I could just bring the piñata to tag only the school celebration they do for each kid. Or really intentionally planning a really low key park party for a tiny circle of folks.
I kept circling back to the question…what is going to make this feel both easy and celebratory? No extra grocery shopping, or planning, or pulling-out-my-hair day of.
Here’s what I arrived at:
My husband is taking him to pick out his piñata.
I’m picking up all the snacks to put inside during my regular grocery run (sorry kids, seaweed, pretzels, and fruit snacks it is!)
On Friday after daycare pick, parents and little people will just walk over to the park down the block for an hour.
There’s a play structure for the kids.
I’m bringing wine for the parents.
My kid will get his piñata
And I will preserve my sanity.
There will always be seasons in life when things that are usually fun just feel hard to pull off in the midst of everything else.
Choose the easy way.
The “lazy” way.
The way that feels celebratory but does not require sacrifice or extra effort.
I’ll ask you the same question that I spent the morning asking myself: what can bring you some ease if you are also in this season of things feeling hard?
Want more resources about Postpartum? Check out Chapter 7 of The Expecting Entrepreneur.
