Yesterday Teen Martha turned 18. I can hardly believe it since it seems like yesterday I was in the hospital as a new parent.  I thought I would share some of our quirky birthday traditions.

The birthday child gets to choose the birthday meal and dessert. This has resulted in things like pumpkin pie, Italian Dippers (modeled after a school lunch item!), fettucine, crab cakes, hamburgers, baked apples, Caesar salad, corn, cookie cake, brownie pizza, etc. I have also created many themed birthday cakes – a nail polish bottle, a Barbie, bowling pins and ball, a hockey rink cake, a spaghetti and meatballs cake (with an April Fool’s Day birthday, what else would you expect?) an Elmo cake, and many more.

I have two special dinner plates that say Happy Birthday on them and the birthday child gets to choose one to use. They always choose the red one when I hope they will choose the blue one! I also have special birthday dessert plates. Each is a different color and has different graphics of cakes and cupcakes on them.

We stopped having family parties when baby #2 came along and celebrate with just the immediate family. We usually have a party for friends though, which has included bowling, rollerblading, a makeover party, a Barbie party, and having a reptile guy come to the house with his cadre of live specimens.

We normally do gifts after dinner and then do cake with candles and singing.

This year we’ve had some breaks with tradition. Dude Martha was invited to go to a Sabres hockey game on his actual birthday, so we celebrated the day before. Teen Martha requested a Coldstone Creamery ice cream cake this year (the first time in 18 years I have not made a cake – or pie- for her birthday). In the past, we’ve been on vacation during birthdays which meant stuffing gifts into my luggage and making birthday strawberry pie in a condo.

What do you do to make your children’s birthdays special?