My kid turns one, adults throw themselves a party

Recently my son Matthew turned 1, and we invited just about everyone we knew to celebrate the fact that we had survived this child for 365 full days, and look how healthy he is, and uninjured, and cute, too, and yes, we did that, so really you should be singing for us.

We sent out invitations more elaborate than some wedding invites, complete with a picture of Matthew at the playground, standing at the slide, smiling and waving at the camera.

It's a cropped picture. We decided not to get the whole view in there, because it would have involved an unflattering look of yours truly, with an unshaven face, ragged hair and bags under my eyes.

It was during a time in Matthew's life where he decided he no longer felt like sleeping through the night. He liked getting up around 2 or 3 in the morning, just to say hi to his folks. Oftentimes, he had a present for us. It's not the kind of present I would ever ask for, unless I was really into composting.

A child turning one is a monumental event, apparently so monumental that we had to buy Matthew a T-shirt with a big "1" on the front of it. I won't reveal how much it cost, because it might make you have to go Number 3 (Number 3, I just decided, is vomit).

Apparently, the number on the shirt stood for how many times it could go in the washer before the number started fading considerably. As in, after one wash, it looked like a semi-colon. Fortunately we were able to return it, get our money back, and then with that money buy a healthy stake in General Motors.

We had quite an extended invite list. It didn't start that way. At first we were just going to invite a few family members. Then we decided to invite more family members. Then we were inviting our neighbors, neighbors we hadn't yet met before inviting them to our son's birthday party so that they could celebrate the joys of turning one.

Before you knew it, I was at Walgreens and the guy next to me was buying the same kind of deodorant, and so I said, "Hey, want to come to my kid's birthday party?" We were planning on having the party at our house, but due to the invite list, moved the location to the high school auditorium.

My wife Bea had been planning this party for, I swear to God, at least six months. Every once in a while, she would come up with another idea for what she wanted to do.

"We should try to get that beanbag toss game from the church and have it on the front lawn."

"We need to try out cakes at So-and-So Place and So-and-So Place to decide what kind we're going to order for Matthew."

"At precisely 1:32, we will light the birthday candles and all the children, especially Matthew, will suddenly refuse to look at any cameras for the next 10 to 15 minutes."

The menu was complicated. My wife wanted to set up a prix fixe menu complete with hors d'ouevres, three different kinds of dips, five kinds of potato salad, eight kinds of other salads, and 15 artistic variations on cole slaw.

We ended up having burgers and dogs on the grill, with a half-full bottle of ketchup as the only condiment, and if you don't like it, then the door's over there. Just make sure you leave Matthew's gift by the fireplace. Thanks for coming.

No, no, of course it wasn't like that. We had stuffed mushrooms, rice salad, potato salad, regular salad, burgers, turkey burgers, hot dogs, and God knows what else. I can't remember everything, but it was all delicious.

Meanwhile, the kids at the birthday party ate string cheese and Cheerios and sat around making constipated-looking faces at each other while they crapped in their diapers.

Yes, it would be nice to think that when you throw your one-year-old a birthday party, that the party is for them. But in reality, Matthew would be plenty happy with a handful of kids his age, half a banana, his sippy cup, a few tennis balls and a couple toy trucks.

The rest of our guests, however, were very impressed.

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Mark Fontecchio

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