Word: birthdaying
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That settled it, as far as Mark Marion and Diane Sanchez, also of Coral Gables, were concerned. Their daughter Ariana, then 17, knew Carla, who was described in the local papers as the "poster child for spoiled teens." Ariana too had wanted a sports car for her 16th birthday, not an unreasonable expectation for a girl with a $2,000 Cartier watch whose bedroom had just had a $10,000 makeover. But Ariana's parents had already reached that moment that parents reach, when they wage a little war on themselves and their values and their neighbors and emerge with...
Certainly that is what many parents are starting to do. "I had one over-the-top birthday party for my child, and I'll never do it again," says Carrie Fisher, daughter of Hollywood star Debbie Reynolds and now the mother of nine-year-old Billie. "She got an elephant, and that's all I'll have to say. It will never happen again. I felt like the biggest ass." Fisher had her epiphany when she heard her daughter bragging to a friend, "My swimming pool is bigger than yours." That prompted some new rules. Among other things, Billie...
...spring day, I was walking with EUDORA WELTY through a little shopping mall. It was her birthday, April 13. There was a surprise party waiting at a bookstore down the way. She was 86. As we walked rather slowly along the glass storefronts, we came to where a wide, smiling, pink-faced man was inflating colorful balloons. As each balloon filled and fattened, the cylinder emitted quite a loud whoosh of air. Eudora looked about to find the sound. "Balloons," I said. I had her hand. "Someone's apparently having a do." "Oh," she said. Those luminous, pale blue eyes...
...James last month, parishioner Mary Pellicano talked about the excesses of a "Dragontails" birthday party she and her husband George recently gave for their son Kieran, 4. "All the paraphernalia, the goody bags--it was over the top," Mary recalled. "Then Kieran hinted he'd have been just as happy playing hide-and-seek with a few friends before the cake. I realized I wasn't doing this for him--I was doing it for me! It was just another way of trying to keep up with the new SUV next door...
...night before, a simplicity circle in Silver Spring, Md., brainstormed solutions to the birthday angst. Jennifer Shields, a mother of children ages 3 and 4, said she explicitly asks on party invitations that guests give only art supplies--and she keeps her kids' gift expectations low by making her home TV-free during the day. Shields got applause--but also sparked debate. "We have to raise our kids to confront commercial realities," said Len Ingber. "We're not Amish...