JP’s first birthday after I split with his mother was a bit uncomfortable. His mother and I decided to go ahead and hold a party for him together. Her parents and mine came, along with JP’s little friends from preschool, some aunts and uncles, and our mutual friends with children. Cake, balloons, and nail-biting tension were shared by all.
Not likely that will be repeated this year. On the one hand, JP is lucky—he’ll get two birthday parties this year instead of one. But even now, at 3, he knows something out-of-the-ordinary is going on between his mother and father. Not all of his schoolmates have a complicated visitation schedule, aggravation over toys and clothes left at the other apartment, and uncertainty over where he will be for the holidays.
I am thinking of this only because today I received another invitation to a birthday party for one of JP’s friends at school. The invite came to me, but the party happens to fall on of his mother’s days with JP. The problem is that I’m friends with the parents in this case, not my ex. I can ask her to take JP to the party, but that will necessitate her rejiggering her schedule with him, which inevitably becomes a fight between the two of us.
Or JP could just not go. Which sucks. As do birthdays. And everything else I can think of right now.