My kids turned 8, and I too had a lovely weekend (and not only becoz I outsourced the cake). Mothers birth and parent under such varying, even traumatic circumstances, that birthdays can mean very many things. We are lucky when our kids' happiness converge with our own #gratitude

Oh and after 8 years of parenting, the only truth I know is that you can expose your kids to most diverse and richest of cultural influences, and nothing will warm their hearts as much as watching something ridiculous like Pup Academy on Netflix

(this truth is both terrifying and freeing - your children are not an extension of you, and cannot be engineered to be so)