While watching Dora the Explorer last week, Raphaela became over-excited by an episode in which all of the characters stage a surprise birthday party for Swiper the Fox. For at least the past month, every morning Raphaela will take a dress out of her drawers and ask me if this is the day she gets to wear her birthday dress. Recently, I pointed to the moon and explained to her that when the moon is at its fullest this month, she will be three years old. We check the skies every night in anticipation.
For years I shunned my own birth day, after a 'traumatic' event that occurred to me at the age of 11: my mother forgot to make my birthday cake (banana with chocolate icing) because my parents had to deal with some tantrum from my brother. Even now, as an adult, I feel the remnants of anger and think, "How could they have forgotten me? Birthdays? Bah humbug!"
Only through Raphaela's enthusiasm for the birthday ritual - crown, cake, balloons, party, friends - I have re-discovered the joy and celebration of the event.
This year she will surely have one party at Gan, after the holidays of Succot. When we visit the States in November, I have already arranged for a celebration of her third birthday with 50 of her relatives, at Thanksgiving Dinner. The question remains regarding a separate, small, private party with friends and adopted family from Israel. The only time which is both appropriate and feasible falls on Chol Hamoed Succot, but most of those days are 'booked' by her friends' parties, and the school year at Gan is still too fresh to know who she would invite from this new group of children.
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