The past few weeks have felt like a blur.
It felt like a marathon preparing for my daughter’s first dance recital and her birthday party. She loves Furbys, and there really are not many Furby decorations out there right now, so I had to get creative.
I turned a disco ball into a Furby centerpiece with yarn hair surrounded by pom poms on a plate charger. I used ChatGPT to create images for her invitations, photo cake print, and table runner. I printed images, cut and pasted them onto colorful gift bags, and assembled everything myself.
Sometimes it felt like I was all by myself creating the magic. I guess in a way I was.
At the same time, we were preparing for family to come into town. My dad and stepmom were coming, along with my husband’s brother, his wife, and their one-year-old son. I was diligently putting away all of my daughter’s tiny toys and accessories so nothing ended up in his mouth.
By the end of the week I still had grocery orders and Costco pickups to do, and then we found out my brother-in-law’s wife and son had come down with a stomach bug. I hated it for them, and I knew driving from Alabama to Texas while sick would have been miserable. I understood completely.
Now I just have a lot of extra food in my house.
But honestly, it is better to have too much than not enough.
Getting my daughter ready for rehearsal and recital ended up not being too bad. We had practiced hair and makeup several times beforehand, so we had it down pretty well. The hardest part was just getting her to sit still long enough to finish it.
I never went through slicking my own hair back into high ponytails as a child because I was never allowed to dance.
So in some ways it felt surreal having my dad there watching his granddaughter dance hip hop on stage.
I couldn’t go to prom growing up because of strict rules, and I think part of the weekend felt emotional because somewhere deep down, I wanted that experience to be mine when I was young.
At the end of the recital, the dance director became emotional thanking her parents for giving her the gift of dance. There was something tender about watching an adult still carry gratitude for an opportunity that shaped her life so deeply.
As my daughter stood on the stage beside all of the other performers, I felt the contrast almost immediately.
I am giving her something I couldn’t have myself growing up.
There was something healing in that realization, even if it hurt a little too.
The birthday party itself was sweet but slightly chaotic. The party coordinator at Chuck E. Cheese was a little spacy and forgot to bring out our cake because she thought my Furby centerpiece was the cake. At one point she almost lit the yarn on fire trying to put candles in it.
All of the guests looked confused while I was laughing and trying to explain that the cake was still in the back somewhere.
Honestly, it made the whole thing feel more memorable.
Last night I took one of my medications for fibromyalgia because I knew the crash would hit afterward. This morning my dad and stepmom left town, my husband went back to work, and my daughter finally crashed for a nap after such a long weekend.
Now the house is quiet.
I’m trying to reset and prepare for the summer ahead.
It is always strange coming down from that level of overstimulation after spending weeks preparing for something emotionally and physically demanding.
But I’m glad she had a big celebration.
I’m glad she felt loved.
And maybe that’s what all of the exhaustion, preparation, cleanup, noise, and emotional overwhelm was really about in the end.
