ds was born on January 3, which isn't as close to Christmas as some of you and your kids, but people do tend to be broke from Christmas AND hung over from New Year's and just plain partied out.
I don't think h really noticed or cared until he was at least three or four, but I cared when he was two.
I never let people give him a combination birthday/Christmas present or wrap his birthday presents in Christmas paper, but as he got older it kind of became obvious that the grandparents (he has no other extended family memebers) would go shopping for the kids' Christmas presents and then as an afterthought remember his birthday and pull out one of the gifts to wrap in birthday paper.
We talked about doing haklf-birthdays but never did. Somehow I've always been able to get kids to come over on his real birthday. The presents are never as good as his sister (March baby) or his friends who have birthdays when people aren't so tapped out financially, but he's such a sociable fellow that the company is really more important to him. He's had some small, low-budget, very "exclusive" birthdays with just one or two friends but he also had a major blow-out for his third birthday when we were very active in a large homeschooling group and it was a good excuse for all the familis to get together CLOSE to the holidays without interfering with family celebrations.
In 2004, I just didn't have the heart to celebrate Christmas after the election, getting dumped (as opposed to a mutual, mature, civilized breakup) with my boyfriend, and dd's moving across the country to live with her grandmother for awhile, so we just skipped it and made a larger celebration of ds's birthday than usual. I would have been happy to just give up Christmas after that since we are not Christian and I'm not a big fan of consumer-oriented capitalism, but ds missed it so we went back to Christmas and a small birthday celebration in 2005.
This year I only got him for the morning of his birthday and then his friends came to take him to the mall and spoil him and celebrate with him.
It kind of helps that one of his best friends has a December 25 birthday. We can;'t afford to give Christmas presents to friends, but I always budget so that Eric gets a birthday present just like anybody else and no matter what, ds can be counted on for Eric's party and Eric can be counted on for ds's.
ds turned fifteen this year.
I don't think h really noticed or cared until he was at least three or four, but I cared when he was two.
I never let people give him a combination birthday/Christmas present or wrap his birthday presents in Christmas paper, but as he got older it kind of became obvious that the grandparents (he has no other extended family memebers) would go shopping for the kids' Christmas presents and then as an afterthought remember his birthday and pull out one of the gifts to wrap in birthday paper.
We talked about doing haklf-birthdays but never did. Somehow I've always been able to get kids to come over on his real birthday. The presents are never as good as his sister (March baby) or his friends who have birthdays when people aren't so tapped out financially, but he's such a sociable fellow that the company is really more important to him. He's had some small, low-budget, very "exclusive" birthdays with just one or two friends but he also had a major blow-out for his third birthday when we were very active in a large homeschooling group and it was a good excuse for all the familis to get together CLOSE to the holidays without interfering with family celebrations.
In 2004, I just didn't have the heart to celebrate Christmas after the election, getting dumped (as opposed to a mutual, mature, civilized breakup) with my boyfriend, and dd's moving across the country to live with her grandmother for awhile, so we just skipped it and made a larger celebration of ds's birthday than usual. I would have been happy to just give up Christmas after that since we are not Christian and I'm not a big fan of consumer-oriented capitalism, but ds missed it so we went back to Christmas and a small birthday celebration in 2005.
This year I only got him for the morning of his birthday and then his friends came to take him to the mall and spoil him and celebrate with him.
It kind of helps that one of his best friends has a December 25 birthday. We can;'t afford to give Christmas presents to friends, but I always budget so that Eric gets a birthday present just like anybody else and no matter what, ds can be counted on for Eric's party and Eric can be counted on for ds's.
ds turned fifteen this year.
