Happy Birthday!

It's not easy being a little brother. Your big brother does everything first, you have to wear his hand-me-downs, he bosses you around... And in our family, the older son has always had "better" birthday parties. Better because he was born in the summer and has always had outdoor parties with lots of people invited. A November birthday is a bit harder to organise and could never be held outside because of the weather.

Until this year! We have been having such a warm fall that we were finally able to pull off an outdoor party for G. He invited 10 friends (5 girls and 5 boys; unlike his brother he has never gone through a "Girls? Yuck!" phase). I organised 12 different outdoor party games, but the kids didn't want to do anything organised at all. They had a wonderful time just running and running and running around the yard...playing with the cat, talking to the dogs, riding bicycles, playing ping-pong, hide and seek and other spontaneous games on their own.

Free play is such a rare treat for Italian kids these days. Every day of their week is super-organised between school, homework and after-school activities. Then about 95% of them live in apartment buildings and never get to play in a yard at all. The parks here are few and far between and, in any case, do not have grass to run or play on.

It was a wild free for all, but a good time was definitely had by all!