Ever since I was little and never got to have helium-filled balloons for any birthday, I have always loved balloons (with helium) and have wanted Kaia to have them for her birthdays. I’m not a crazy mom in the sense that I have never filled an entire room with helium balloons or done anything that extravagant (wow, that would be expensive!). But at the very minimum, I like to get her a balloon for her age. She has loved them since she was 1, and she gets excited to see the new balloon every year. Playing with it gives her a lot of joy, and it gives me joy to watch her giggling and hitting it.

I asked the birthday party venue for their pricing on balloons and found it to be quite reasonable, and even borderline cheap for the neighborhood. I shared this pricing with the parents we’re co-hosting this party with. Thus far, they have been very easy going and eager to hear our opinions on everything. If anything, they seem to be deferring to us to suggest things and make decisions. But then the dad, who happens to be the co-chair of the parent association’s sustainability committee, messaged our group Whatspp to say that he doesn’t have strong opinions about much, but one area that he definitely does feel strongly about is that he does not want balloons because they are simply not sustainable. But, he said that if Kaia really wanted them, then he would just relent.

And there, my friends, my childhood love of balloons was popped in a second.

Okay, so to be clear, I am very well aware that balloons are not sustainable and are terrible for the environment; this is a fact. After they deflate, they simply go into a landfill. They are not recyclable… nope, not at all. Helium has its own controversy that I’m not getting into here. But we get a balloon just once a year — ONCE A YEAR. It’s like with things that are clearly bad for us, such as bacon: we don’t eat it often, just a handful of times a year at most! So when I saw this message, while my heart did break a little, I did want to respect his opinion and also let his opinion matter here, so I asked if we could compromise: instead of getting all twenty of the balloons plus the number balloons I envisioned, could we just get one “5” and one “6” (their son is turning 6) balloon so that their son didn’t feel left out when our daughter would have one? Plus, this would also save us some money by not buying more balloons, and who doesn’t want to save money when throwing a kid’s birthday party?

It’s still win/win doing a joint kids’ birthday party!