I feel bad. I feel like the worst mommy in the world because I wasn’t in town for my son’s third birthday. I wasn’t there to wake him up, give him a giant hug, or wish him a happy birthday. I feel worse that we had to celebrate it on a day that fit better into my busy travel schedule.

My job requires me to travel quite a lot and this Montreal conference landed during his birthday. I was able to change my flight so at least I was able to be home in time to wish him a happy birthday on his actual birthday.

Since he is three and still doesn’t quite get the concept of birthdays, we celebrated a day late. I know I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself. There was no way around it, but I do feel this nagging guilt for not being there to celebrate with my first born on his actual birthday.

To make up for not being there, I decided to throw Rocco a little Blaze birthday party at his pre-school. The teachers happily obliged my idea to bring cupcakes, party hats, and gift bags on a random weekday afternoon, to celebrate Rocco’s third birthday.

I wasn’t sure what theme to pick this year (last year was fire trucks), so I decided to go with a Blaze birthday party because he is completely obsessed with that cartoon. He watches one episode every night before bed. Our entire family has the intro song memorized and we all sing in unison as Blaze drives onto our tv screen.

I found these adorable, free, downloadable hats and party bag decorations on the Nick Jr. website. I downloaded them at Kinkos, printed them in color on white cardstock and cut them out (while I was in Montreal).

For the Blaze party hats, I planned to cover a pre-made paper party hat and tape the back to secure them. Unfortunately, the printable was smaller than the party hats I had purchased, so they just looked silly taped on top. If I had purchased some elastic string, I could have made individual hats with the template. I was very short on time, so I ended up using Cars hats I had purchased as back-ups — not quite with the Blaze theme, but none of the kids noticed.

As for the bags, I bought some inexpensive paper bags and taped one of the large Blaze characters on each of the party bags. I filled them with some little party store trinkets.

Since I was out of town and didn’t have time to bake Rocco a cake this year (1^st birthday, 2^nd birthday), I pre-ordered some cupcakes with white buttercream and confetti sprinkles and placed one of these Blaze and the Monster Machines rings I found on Etsy on top of each cupcake.

Despite my guilty feelings, Rocco had a fun third birthday party with all his school friends. He loved the Blaze birthday party theme and even several days later, he still asks to wear his party hat and cupcake ring. I can’t believe my baby boy is already three. I’m glad I was able to celebrate with him, even if it was a day late.