The Best Gift Ever

Newsletter 2024-06-03

The triple birthday party only comes around once a year, even if it feels as though it never really goes away. It seems like we spend six months preparing for it. That’s an exaggeration in most cases, except with my friend Seth, who sometimes buys gifts for my girls a full year in advance. There has yet to be a Lego sale at Meijer to escape his notice. I expect him to eventually build up enough of a gift lead to keep my kids supplied with plastic bricks for their birthdays through college. You’re never too old for another blocky TIE fighter. Saturday, our half a year of prep work paid off. We threw yet another successful triple birthday party, full of family, laughter, and the most epic, indulgent gift of my kids’ young lives. We may need to spend the next six months napping to recover.

As I explain every year in the newsletter about this party, three of my four kids were born in a tight cluster. Betsy and Mae came into this world two years and one day apart, and Lucy was born two years and two weeks thereafter. My wife Lola and I were super precise up until our youngest, Waffle. All parents give up a little bit by the end. For the past nine years (I’m guessing we started when Lucy turned one. I can’t imagine we hosted a major party in the hospital.), we‘ve had one joint birthday party for the three of them and invited our families and family friends. Some might find it cruel to make the kids always share a party, but I think they’re pretty lucky to have regular birthday parties at all. Growing up, I had one birthday party when I was five, and my parents always regretted it. They didn’t realize at the time that I would become the oldest of what turned out to be a million kids. They were locked into giving each and every one of them a kindergarten birthday party with their classmates, a process that stretched out over the next twenty-two years. (My youngest brother was a senior in high school at the triple birthday party this year.) If my parents could go back in time to change just one thing, they would have stopped themselves from throwing that first party. If they had extra time, maybe they’d also prevented World War II. Waffle isn’t included in the triple birthday party, but she benefits as well. Because the other three girls get a party, she gets one all to herself in the fall. She also gets a few pity gifts at the triple birthday party. She’s been gaming the system since the day she was born. Her favorite books are The Storyteller and Machiavelli’s The Prince.

The triple birthday party isn’t just a shameless gift grab, although that’s ninety percent of it. It’s also an open house for our family. Once a year, Lola and I invite our parents and siblings into our home and put on the facade of being functional human beings. That requires an extreme amount of cleaning. I naively hoped that would be less of a problem this year than in the past. Thanks to my board game obsession, we’ve settled into a rhythm of inviting people over to our house nearly twice a week. I thought we’d inoculated ourselves to the unspoken judgment of our peers. Everyone already knows our house is a mess, so we have nothing to hide. Sadly, in the lead up to this year’s triple birthday party, I discovered that Lola still has standards and the capacity for shame. That was most unfortunate for the rest of us.

Usually, we throw the triple birthday party closer to Betsy and Mae’s birthdays in the middle of May when the kids are still in school. We have to scramble on nights and weekends to make our house look fit for habitation. This year, we pushed the party to June 1st, when the kids were out for summer break. That meant they were in the house all day with me. The biggest downside of working from home is that my family lives here, too. That’s not a problem when my kids sleep through half the work day and hide in their rooms for the other half. There’s a reason that, in June and July, I let them stay up as late as they want. When they have to actually get out of bed to do chores, pandemonium ensues. There is no one more put upon or oppressed than a child given an easy task to accomplish and sufficient time to do it. Lola left the kids a list of chores to do over the course of last week. At most, it should have taken them forty-five minutes each day. Instead, they defaulted to six-hour screaming matches. Simple jobs like folding their own laundry or picking up their own stuff in their own rooms for some reason required both verbal and physical combat. At the height of tensions, when the kids were cleaning the playroom, Waffle was actively driving progress backwards. Betsy requested that Waffle be sent outside rather than forced to “help.” I obliged. Waffle was banished from the indoors while the other three girls finished up. She soon got bored with riding her bike and fell asleep in a chair on the porch. I’d like to say it taught her a lesson. Maybe it did. The next day, she did her chore slightly less slowly than usual. I’ve now incorporated exile into my parenting toolbox.

The girls and I worked on the house during the day, while Lola did her part at night after work. Her main task was making custom cakes for each birthday girl. As the kids have gotten older, their tastes have become more refined. No one asked for a cake version of a chinchilla Squishmallow this year. It was the end of an era. Excuse me while I shed a tear. When not fighting with each other over simple daily tasks, the kids each researched what they wanted for their own cakes. Mae asked for an elegant teal dessert with butterflies. Betsy requested a blue one that resembled a duck pond. She recently became obsessed with that particular water fowl for reasons no one can explain. I won’t complain. It’s better than her being really into boys. Lucy, meanwhile, asked for a cake with a dragon emblem based on a book series she likes. I’m glad one of my children is still a child. We have too much growing up going on around here, except when it comes to cleaning, when the four of them revert into a feral pack of toddlers.

Saturday morning, the kids were finally a net asset rather than a liability. We worked on party preparations until the last minute. They could sense the approach of presents and did what they could to get us across the finish line. We prepared a taco bar, sliced fruits and vegetables, and packed the fridge with drinks. As a last step, I took their annual birthday pictures. I can’t wait until ten years from now when these pop up in my Facebook memories and totally devastate me. Somehow, I’m always surprised that my kids get older at a steady and predictable rate. At noon, the first guests showed up. Our house was soon full of people bearing gifts. The girls played with their cousins and interacted with the adults, but their hearts weren’t in it. The countdown to the best part of the day had begun.

After cake, everyone assembled in the living room to watch the kids open gifts. The girls were so excited they could have exploded. They were especially perplexed by the biggest box in the room, supplied by my college friend Greg who drove down from Chicago. I made them open that one last. Their eyes never strayed too far from it. They were soon overwhelmed by a king’s ransom of Lego sets and craft kits. Mae got her body weight in rubber bands for bracelets. If you melted them all down, you could have made a full set of tires. Lucy, an aspiring master gardener, got a potted plant, which I thought was especially clever. I’ll be sure to steal that idea for next year. Betsy received a desk organizer. She’s looking forward to getting her half of her room even more orderly. It’s a shame Mae’s side still looks like it was hit by a category five hurricane. I was surprised and delighted by all the gifts, including the ones I supposedly bought. You can’t expect me to remember everything Lola purchases months in advance. She is second in her advanced planning only to Seth, who is already searching for Lego sets for the triple birthday party in 2025.

After a few minutes, all the reasonably sized presents were open. It was time for the giant box. We summoned Waffle to the middle of the floor to join her sisters. The mega gift was expensive enough to cover her future birthday, too. I knew in advance what it was, and I was even more amped up than the kids. When Greg bought it, he didn’t tell me the news in words. He simply sent me nine gifs in a row. I instantly knew what he was talking about. He found his Holy Grail. For years, he’s kept his eye on one particular item online, waiting for the price to come down. It never did. Then, on a chance encounter at a brick-and-mortar going out of business sale, he found the item slightly discounted. It was still far too expensive to give as a gift, but he bought it anyway, ensuring that he would win this birthday party and perhaps all birthday parties yet to come. I was happy to admit defeat. The girls tore off the wrapping paper. They found the stuff dreams were made of.

It was the Lego Hogwarts Castle, a six-thousand-piece behemoth clocking in at two feet tall and two feet wide when fully assembled. It’s one of the ten largest Lego sets in the world and the one that’s been at the top of Betsy’s wish list for most of her childhood. Years ago, she told me she was saving up her money for either college or the Lego Hogwarts Castle. Now she doesn’t have to choose. I would have killed for a gift like that at her age. My favorite birthday remains the time I got a massive Lego pirate ship. It took my mom and me three days to put it together at the kitchen table. After my kids opened the Hogwarts set, I looked up my old ship. It was nine hundred pieces. The Harry Potter set dwarfs it by a factor of six.

I have no idea where we’re going to put this thing. That’s not a problem. We’ll move into a bigger house if we have to. Over time, my kids will forget all the chores and fighting that went into getting ready for this party. The only things they’ll remember from the day will be the custom cakes made for them by their loving mother and the giant Lego set that will take up half of their living space for the rest of their childhoods. That’s all you need for an epic day. I can’t wait for the triple birthday party next year.

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There are just fifteen days left until the release of my next book, The Gods of Spenser Island. It’s a sci-fi adventure with swords, alien octopi, and maybe even a heroic/villainous goat-pig-llama hybrid that saves the day or dooms humanity. I’m very proud of how it turned out. Realistically, if you want a signed book, you need to order in the next few days. Second Flight Books/Main Street Books in Lafayette, Indiana, needs some lead time to order them so I can sign them before the release date. You can also get unsigned copies from any of the other retailers listed. Get the book here: Not as cool as the Lego Hogwarts Castle, but close.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James