taking the good with the bad

We had some highs and lows this week. My 4 year old went to a birthday party for a pre-school friend. A relative works at the preschool and knows about our food dye restrictions. The parent went to great effort to make treat bags with individually wrapped bags of cookies so they would be dye-free. They also got a cookie cake and requested that part be left un-frosted so my daughter could eat it.

That was all great... One of the best efforts that has been made on behalf of any of my children. There was only one problem. When they cut the cookie cake, they dragged the knife through the red frosting to get to the plain part for my daughter. Yeah....well, so much for all that effort. I may have spoken up if I was there, but I had to send my husband to the party since I was in a professional training all day. Needless to say, I saw a lot of behaviors pop out over the next 3 days that are not normally part of the routine. Hopefully we're winding back down now.

The other great news was my 10 year old had a classmate bringing in a birthday treat. The mom actually called me ahead to find out if a plain glazed donut would be OK. The rest of the class had donuts with sprinkles, but they kept a plain one separate.

So all in all we are even making progress with birthday parties, one family at a time. It's nice when thoughtful parents think about my kids and try to make sure they are not left out.