Just Admit It, First Birthday Parties Aren't For Babies

You've planned the perfect first birthday party with that adorable theme that you found on Pinterest and the personalized banner with the matching napkins you ordered. You spent all night baking the smash cake and then trying to get the frosting just right because it has to look exactly like the picture you pinned before your baby was even conceived.

The food is set on a multilevel buffet of trays, platters, and cake stands with the giant metallic "1" balloon tied to the back of the high chair. Your baby is dressed in the outfit you ordered five months ago, and even though you keep saying you have no idea how this happened so fast, you are ready to celebrate.

You're so excited to see your baby's baby "friends," your new mom friends, your family, and your other friends who you were close with long before you became a mom. But really you can't wait to catch up with your other friends because it's been 100 years (aka 12 months) since you've even seen them. You start chatting with your girlfriend who drove all the way out from the city to come, but your baby starts crying and you bend down to pick them up and get so distracted that you never return to the conversation. You never even say goodbye because you were too busy trying to capture the frosting mess on your baby's face during the cake smash.

And while you're trying to get the perfect picture for Instagram, your phone runs out of storage and you think maybe the baby has had too much sugar anyway. So, you go to take them out of the high chair but they loved that first taste of sugar so much that they start screaming hysterically when you rip them away from the remnants. And everyone that was gathered around commenting about how cute your baby was with all that frosting all over their face has now walked away to refill their drinks.

Now your baby is wiping colored frosting all over the shirt that finally fits you again and you glance at the clock and notice that they should have gone down for a nap an hour ago but you were trying to be the fun, carefree mom and not worry about it because it's their first birthday, after all. But they clearly need a nap to the point where you can't deny them that 45-minute slumber any longer. So you put the Sleep Sheep on the loudest possible setting to drown out the noise and finally get the baby down.

You return to the fizzling party to say goodbye to the people you never even had a chance to say hi to and then start cleaning up the mess that was made by that one older sibling that wasn't really invited. You start sponging food particles from the crevices of the high chair for the 13,872,481 time in your life. You wipe up cake and crushed Goldfish from the floor and realize that there's a giant stack of gift bags and brightly wrapped boxes by the front door even though you specifically said no gifts on the invitation.

As you're going through toys that you know you'll lose the parts to, books you already have, and cards that your baby can't even read, you realize that first birthdays are not actually for the baby who was either asleep or crying during the entire event. Instead, they are for the parents to bask in their success at keeping said baby, and themselves, alive for 12 whole months. To parade their cute offspring in front of family and friends who you haven't seen since the baby was born and declare that you have succeeded in the most difficult year of your life thus far and — look! — you even managed to pull off a party.

Which makes you think that if you really wanted to celebrate, you should have gone somewhere far, far away from your baby with your partner who you're pretty sure you still love but could really use some time alone with just to make sure!