Bellapalooza!

I never had birthday parties as a kid – not yearly, like most kids.

Well, I had ONE that I remember – shared with my brother who was born 728 days after me. One party. For two kids. Sporadically. That was it. So when I turned 8 and realized nobody was going to make sure I felt special on my day, I started baking birthday cakes for my family myself. I took that job seriously because I understood something at 8 years old that most adults never figure out: being forgotten on your birthday is a special kind of lonely.

Fast forward to me becoming a mother, and let me be very clear: I went absolutely fucking all out.

Themed parties. Cakes driven in from Chicago. Multiple celebrations. The works. Because when you didn’t get celebrated as a kid, you become the kind of mom who celebrates like it’s a national holiday. You become the mom who throws Bellapalooza.

This year – well, technically this year is 2026 and Bella just turned 21, but I’m resharing this post from March 2010 when she turned 5 because something in me needs you to understand what that little girl meant to me then, and what that grown woman means to me now.

When Bella was 4, she chose Moulin Rouge as her birthday party theme.

Not Frozen. Not Cinderella. Not something a preschooler is “supposed” to want. She looked at me with that determined little face and said Moulin Rouge, and I thought – yes. This is MY kid. This is the girl who knows what she wants and isn’t apologizing for it.

We did the whole thing in hot pink and black. Daddy made the cake (he does every year, and it’s one of my favorite traditions). Grandma made her a Pink Diamond costume. And this tiny 4-year-old walked around her party like she owned the place, completely unbothered by the fact that most people thought it was weird.

I took a million photos because I was already doing that thing mothers do – the thing where you’re watching your kid and you suddenly realize they’re not going to be little anymore. Like watching sand slip through your fingers in real time. One second she’s eating cake for the first time at her first birthday, and the next she’s opening gifts and saying things like “Oh my gosh, thank you all so much. I wasn’t expecting so many gifts!”

Who is this little adult? Where did my baby go?

I got her a musical birthday card – the kind that plays a song when you open it. She and her sister are obsessed with these cards. This one said something sappy about happiness and love and dreams coming true, and it played “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I about lost it.

I was standing there with my phone camera, trying to capture the moment, but really I was trying to hold onto time itself. Trying to freeze her at that exact second where she was pure joy and wonder and completely unselfconscious happiness. That real smile – not the one for the camera, but the actual real one that only shows up when something genuinely delights you.

And I thought: I need her to remember this. I need her to know that someone in her life thinks her birthday is THE most important day of the year. That she is worth celebrating loudly and unapologetically in a world that constantly tells mothers to tone it down.

Because I know what it’s like to not feel that way.When you grow up not being celebrated, you don’t just become a mom who throws big parties. You become a mom who’s trying to rewrite your own story through your kids. You become obsessed with creating memories that matter, moments that stick, experiences they can’t forget even if they want to.

Every year is memorable. Every year is commemorated. Every year is BELLAPALOOZA because Bella gets to be a kid only once, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let those years slip by without her knowing how absolutely treasured she is.

Her actual birthday is Wednesday and we will celebrate in style, as we always do. It is one of the most important days of my life. More important than New Year’s. More important than Christmas. Because it’s the day I became a mother. The day I was born as a mother. The day I got to be the person for my daughter that nobody was for me.

In that moment when I first held her, I was transformed. Changed forever. Not in some magical, Hallmark-card way, but in a real, bone-deep, I-will-never-be-the-same way.

Happy Birthday to my Bella – my pink-loving, strong-willed, knows-exactly-who-she-is daughter. You were that magical 5-year-old in the Moulin Rouge costume, and now you’re 21, and I’m still not ready for time to move this fast.

But I’m so damn proud of the woman you’re becoming.

And I’m still not apologizing for celebrating you like you matter.

Because you do.

XX