Parents Birthdays Lacking Post-Baby?

My wife asked me the day after her birthday, "Did you forget it was my birthday yesterday?" In reality, I was painfully aware of it for weeks. I felt trapped when gift shopping crossed my mind.  The idea of taking twins to the mall isn't frightening by itself but to go shopping for an amazing birthday gift for the woman that outdoes her self every holiday for me WITH TWINS was overwhelming.  Meijer seemed to offer nothing worthy of her, thus looking for a personal gift post-grocery shopping with tired babies proved fruitless.  Shopping online only works if I'm ordering more of something that I already have such as toiletries and cleaning products, appliance replacement parts, or any baby stuff with a recognizable brand name.  Otherwise, it's a crap shoot of Chinese postage labels, bad stitching, and strange, "not exactly urine", smells. 



I did manage to buy her a slightly nicer pair of sunglasses than what she normal buys/breaks each month and some other small stuff that she found obviously underwhelming. So I planned a surprise overnight weekend jaunt for the four of us and then found out about a birthday party for her brother, whom I share a birthday with, that we couldn't skip. I learned next year I"ll need a babysitter for an entire day on a weekday the first week of August.

The real issue is that she threw me an amazing, TRUE, surprise 30th birthday party last August and invited everyone.  Whereas, I bought her a cake the day after her birthday from the bakery section of the grocery store after she told me to do so.  At one point, she said, "Do birthday's suck after you have kids?"  I didn't answer out of fear but later that night, I realized something looking at our sleeping twins: Birthdays won't suck at all, they will be the most incredible days from now on....  just not mommy and daddy's.