I have an ancient black and white photo of myself at the party celebrating my third birthday. I am seated at a dining room table surrounded by adults and children. I am crying in front of the burning candles. Everyone else is smiling.

Is it any wonder that I still suffer through my kids' parties?

The two words "birthday party" fill me with dread. I know there are lots of parents out there -- mostly mothers -- who thrill to bake special cakes, decorate the house and invite the whole nursery school class over.

These are the same parents who sew their kids costumes on Halloween, knit their own stockings each Christmas, know how to refinish a dresser and cut zucchini in zigzag patterns.

These mothers go all out on birthdays. They bake cakes in the shapes of cars, Big Bird, butterflies, and even computers and cut out sandwiches in smiling faces with cookie cutters. They provide cookie cutters and Jello for the kids to play with. They make 50 types of frosting and have the kids frost the cupcakes.

And their houses stay clean.

And they smile.

They have been known to move the furniture out of the living room and teach the children line dancing. In one particularly frightening example, a mother lugged an overhead projector home from her job as a teacher so that the kids could draw on transparencies, show their art work, make up stories in groups, and then act them out.

These women make me look bad.

With four young children, I have tried to pay proper attention to their birthdays. I feel that it's due them; that if I don't make them a proper party, I will appear on the list of America's most unwanted mothers.

I will state this unequivocally: Every party I have thrown has been a complete and utter disaster.

And I try so hard. I plan. I work. I try to be like Trudy Lowenbraun, the den mother, who shows kids how to do wonders with empty rolls of toilet paper; making dolls, mobiles and whatever creative idea springs to her mind. Or my friend Beth who can bake a cake from scratch without a recipe. She doesn't even need a birthday. All her child has to do is walk into her house and say she passed a spelling test and Beth immediately whips up a cake.

Okay I admit it. I can't bake.

Of course I have my reasons. My mother couldn't bake either. The only cake she baked my whole childhood had scraps of paper from the packaged mix in each bite.

The first fiasco I planned was a karate party for my four-year-old's birthday.

He was a fan of teenage mutant ninja turtles.

I invited his whole class.

I made everybody black head bands and sash belts. I tied a headband and belt on each child as he entered the house.

I assembled the boys in the backyard. I taught them how to stand in karate position and how to punch and shout, "Utz." They punched the air. They punched each other. And then they scattered in the back yard, 18 little boys.

Um, I said.

I thought the karate would take a half-hour, not four and a half minutes. The boys swarmed through the house and through the yard, looking for real action.

Children at a birthday party are not on their best behavior. "Let's have the cake," I said.

Candles, singing, slicing, eating. Cake on the floors, on the walls, on the couch.

We still had one hour left.

I had run out of activities. Suffice it to say that the forces of compete and utter chaos won out that day.

I'm still recovering.

Then there was the cheerleading party I threw for my five-year-old daughter. Don't accuse me of sexism. I admit to it. But it was her choice. I offered karate, masochist that I am. But no, she wanted cheerleading.

Thinking myself brilliant, I made preparations for everybody to make their own pom-poms and batons. From crepe paper and two sticks.

Each child glued his pieces. That took about ten minutes.

My daughter cried because the other girls finished their pom-poms first. Then she fought with her older brother who started tearing pieces from her pom-pom.

Next I took the girls to the family room and tried to teach them cheers. (Okay, I admit it. I was a cheerleader until it became too politically incorrect.) Until my daughter totally freaked out unless she was at the front of each line. Unfortunately there were two lines.

She started crying. I picked her up and held her while the other girls practiced their cheers.

Then she ran into her room and missed the rest of the party.

There have been other disastrous parties. One where my mother-in-law traveled 1000 miles to be with her grandchild on his birthday. That was the one where the birthday boy scratched his best friend's eye because he had taken his marker.

The whole family, including my mother-in-law, took a four-hour nap after that party.

Please, if you are the type of mother that I am, learn from my mistakes. In the interest of promoting family sanity, I offer my humble list of suggestions for surviving birthday parties:

1. Never ever have children born in the winter. Indoor parties are to be avoided at all costs.
   
   
2. Do not let any siblings within a 500-mile radius of the house. They are major party saboteurs. They have even been known to blow out the birthday boy's candles.
   
   
3. Don't expect any activity to go as planned. My friend made 360 water balloons for her child's fifth birthday, invited six kids, and expected the kids to play with the balloons for an hour. The balloons were all popped ten minutes later.
   
   
4. Do as my friend Tamar does. Birthday parties make her so anxious that she tries to postpone them until the next year.
   
   
5. Buy your kid ten small presents. She'll never miss the party.