Celebrating your birthday as a parent is not quite the same as in pre-parent life, but it sure is a barrel of fun with your munchkins!

I had a great birthday. I didn’t have any expectations, but I did make hints about possible things I’d like to do on the day, and those hints were heard.

Morning Sunshine

The morning started with two eager faces, wanting to wake me up so I could open presents. The thing was, I had been up at 3 am because I couldn’t sleep, and had pumped out this blog post, then crawled back under the covers just after 5 am.

Jacob sent the girls out to the family room to watch a movie so we could sleep in a little more.

It worked for approximately 10 minutes.

Finally, we relented and Jacob and the girls disappeared to get the presents.

With Love

The best part about receiving presents is not usually the present themselves, but the intention behind the gift. Kids just love to give, and sometimes they also like to step into the spotlight. Which made me think about how my birthday has changed since I’ve become a mum. Birthdays are a big event in our household, but I don’t always get to indulge in the spotlight.

Here are 8 ways your birthday changes as soon as you’re a parent.

1. There is no such thing as a sleep-in on your birthday. The kids will wake early and they will be eager for you to open your presents. It’s just like Christmas morning.
2. You will have help opening your presents — or your kids may just open them for you. If you have multiple kids that want to help, delegate. One child opens the card, the other helps unwrap the present. Another child can put the present in a pile; and if you have more kids than this, give everyone a turn.
3. You will get more gift cards and cash than actual gifts because there’s not much cash left in the family budget to indulge mum. These are greatly received. I will be using said vouchers to get household items we are in desperate need of.
4. You will have to share your presents. Maggie bagged my Samantha Wills ring and Esther told me all the things I could buy her with my Target gift card.
5. You will crave time alone. And you will get it, but the lounge room will turn into a disaster zone. You can’t have it both ways.
6. The kids will tell you how they would like to spend your birthday, which makes sense because if the kids are happy, mummy should be happy too.
7. You will have help blowing out your candles. There may be more spit than air when said candles are blown out. But that just adds flavour to the icing.
8. You will have to deal with sugar-high kids after they’ve had cake. There is no time to contemplate getting another year older when your toddler has a meltdown after eating all the icing from her piece of cake. And then you have to clean their sticky hands afterwards.

In many ways, having children makes birthday celebrations even more special. Kids love to celebrate and when there are presents and cake involved, how can you not be excited by it all?

How have birthdays changed for you since you’ve become a parent? I will get to open my presents one day in the future… won’t I?

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Originally published at The Plumbette. Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.