Happy Birthday, Aaron and Gretchen!

If it seems as if every other post of late has commemorated another birthday, it's not your imagination. Andy and I and all five of our kids celebrate birthdays between January and June (as do Ronan and Molly). By the time the twins' birthday rolls around on June 30, everyone is suffering so much birthday fatigue Aaron and Gretchen are lucky to get a dingdong with two candles in it.

I kid, I kid (in the immortal words of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog). What I meant to say is that not one child in our household gets even a molecule more of anything than the others, because everyone knows that would mean - in the irrefutable logic of kids since the beginning of time - we loved that child more.

This year, after two years of parties attended by family and my friends, the twins finally got a party catered to their little friends. And by friends, I mean the small individuals from their school with whom they'd been engaging in parallel play for the past year, and the 3-year-old goddess Margalit, with whom Aaron and Gretchen are both so infatuated they can barely speak in her presence.

I'm happy to report that a good time was had by all. While the kids bounced around to music provided by the twins' music teacher, the moms of the boys freaked out that their sons weren't potty trained to the moms of the girls, who all were. (Parenting boy-girl twins never ceases to fascinate me.) We then adjourned to the patio for hotdogs, hamburgers, and a cake that was, naturally, half orange and brown and half pink and purple.

As for me, I celebrated the end of an era: the baby era. I've always considered three the age of personhood, when you can start counting on kids to listen better, to talk better, to start thinking things through. Shortly (I mean it, Aaron), I'll be saying goodbye to diapers forever, just as I've said goodbye to nursing, bottles, baby food, and cribs. And I don't feel even the hint of nostalgia. Maybe when Aaron and Gretchen are learning to drive, I'll long for these days of complete physical and emotional dependence.

But I doubt it.