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Your thoughts on kid birthday parties
What are your thoughts on kid birthday parties, particularly for kids younger than school-age? Do you just invite family over for cake? Do you do something a little more elaborate? Do you invite your own friends to your kid's birthday parties? Do you invite kids from daycare/preschool? Something else?
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Re: Your thoughts on kid birthday parties
Other than daycare friends we don't know a lot of people with small kids around here and with daycare so far away I don't think any daycare kids would come to our party, plus we don't get invited to theirs. So we do family parties.
Most of our family is out of town so they stay for the weekend and there are 3 other little cousins that come. I obviously go all out in crafting/baking/cooking but I would probably do it much smaller if the family was in the area and just coming over for a few hours.
Once Maggie starts kindergarten I would imagine we would have a kid party with just family that has kids coming and then if family wants to come out another weekend they can.
I've talked about this before, but I'm not big on kids' birthday parties. Probably because we didn't do bday parties very much growing up. Birthdays were usually just your favorite meal and cake with the immediate family. I also kind of resent dedicating so much weekend time to them (we have a lot of friends with kids and the year they all turned 1, it felt like we were going to bday parties every frickin' weekend).
So, that being said, we'll be doing bdays pretty low key in general. Once C is old enough, he can decide what he'd like to do for his day - family dinner, go to the beach, aquarium, sleepover, whatever. Just because I don't want to hire a clown and buy a kajillion balloons doesn't mean we won't celebrate. We will probably try to have decent parties, inviting our friends and C's friends, for "big" years (kind of arbitrary, but I'm thinking 5, 10, 13).
With C's second birthday, I was pretty anti-giant party and yet he still ended up with three celebrations, three singings of "Happy Birthday" and three pieces of cake. We had dinner with family, his daycare "party" and dinner at a restaurant on his actual birthday. I think he was fairly well celebrated.
Ditto all of this. Although I still don't really don't want to do anything big for J's third birthday. Some of our friends have had moon bounces and done play places for 2nd birthdays, which just seems over the top to me.
They do cake etc at daycare (we bring), and then we do a family gathering on the weekend. This year we might invite a FEW friends and have a FEW activities (crafts? bubbles? I don't know) but I'm not shelling out a lot of money or spending my time on much more than that. He always gets a homemade cake, though!
TTC #2: BFP 12/17/11, m/c 1/7/12 and D&C 1/12/12
baby blog/cooking blog
we did DDs first birthday party at our house with just a few people. Last year, we did it at MyGym because DH has just had surgery and I did not want to deal with a party at the house. Plus, most of our friends have kids and I did not want twelve 2 year olds running mad in our house :-) This year, DH is having surgery again so I have just planned a pizza party for kids and parents. It is nice to catch up with our friends and I don't have to do any cooking or cleaning.
I can't make this clicky because I am on my phone but I am writing for a friends blog so if you go to Alexandrialifestyle DOT com there is a recent article on the birthday party scene that lists some local VA places for parties.
My kids are at home, so they don't have daycare friends, though DD goes to part-time preschool now. So far, we have done:
DD first birthday-at our house, no kids, 10ish adults (close friends, babysitter, and local grandparents). Just heavy appetizers and cake. I opened the presents for all to see.
DD second birthday--dinner and cake with local grandparents, at our house
DS first birtday-same as DD first birthday
For DD's 3rd brithday this summer, I am thinking about what to do. I think it would be fun to have a bunch of kids and their parents over for a party. Very low key, more like a playdate but with various activities (a bubble machine, water tables set up, we have a sandbox and lots of outside toys), lunch and cake. If we do, I would invite the 9 other kids in her preschool class and a few of her other friends, made through various playgroups. But, I don't know if I should also invite our close friends, babysitter and local grandparents or do something seperate with them, like a cookout one night.
I feel like such a terrible mom - LO's first birthday came in the middle of the plague season that has devastated my house, and was also just two weeks after Christmas, so we just invited the grandparents over, and we got pizza and had cake.
I had all these ideas for a fun birthday party with our friends, but was just too sick to make them happen.
1st birthday was cake and snacks at our place with friends (almost entirely adults).
2nd was trip to the Natural History Musuem with his grandparents and aunt and uncle followed by pizza and cake at home.
3rd is coming up soon and I have no idea what we might pull together at the last minute but it will likely just be very low-key again. He'll have a popsicle party at school.
We don't have large families, including us, kids, aunt/uncles, grandparents (no cousins), it's 12 people and that'd be pretty boring! (Plus, it's best to have lots of ppl around when MIL and stepMIL are in the same house).
1st b-days were at our house, yummy food, cake, decorations (lots of cleaning up before and after for me), families and my close friends and their kids; no planned activities/entertainment, having "new to them" toys was fun enough.
DD's 2nd and 3rd were at a local playground, which has a roofed gazebo with picnic tables and benches, $76 to rent. Pizza, cake, minimal decorations and work for me. Same invitees as above plus a few other friends and their kids. Kids and parents love it, I don't have to provide entertainment.
For DS's 2nd I am thinking of doing the same. DD's 4th is not til this Fall but I may invite some of her pre-school friends. So far we have not had any invitations to her pre-school friends' parties so it'll partly depend on that.
For DS's first two birthdays, we invited family and our friends with kids that were around his age and lived nearby. Last year he had his first friends only party b/c he had friends of his own. We still invited our friends with kids too, b/c he played with them some too. This year, he'll be having his first REAL party with just the kids he plays with.
We'll do a similar thing for DD.
As someone who is about to host people this weekend for DD#2's second birthday, this is a very current topic...
With DD#1 we just did family-focused parties for birthdays 1 and 2. When she was 3 and in preschool, we had gone to our share of birthdays for her friends and we wanted to reciprocate in some way, but we didn't want to do something big, so we did a joint party with one of her friends (whose family we are close to and whose birthday is 3 days earlier) at their house. When she was 4, we reserved a spot at a public park and did a theme party and invited her whole preschool class. We did the same for #5 (different park)--this time inviting her whole kindergarten class and some old preschool friends. I liked the park parties because in those cases we were still in our condo, there was no way that we could have hosted many people at home and it was easy to set up and clean up. Now that we are in a SFH, I think we'll be hosting more bday parties at our house.
For DD#2, we did just a family thing for the first birthday. This year we are doing something a bit bigger, partly in an effort to get to know more of the parents and kids in her new daycare (she started in the fall) and partly as a way of reconnecting with some of the families from her old daycare (which is where DD#1 was when she was younger). We're not doing anything that elaborate--just cupcakes and some games.
I do think that the first couple of years, birthday parties are often more for the adults than for the kids...and that's fine...but I don't think it's worth going all out on parties, regardless of the age. The point is to have an opportunity to celebrate...I didn't have big parties when I was a kid most years and that was fine.
Up until last year all the kids' parties were at our house (this includes: DD #1's 1, 2 and 3 birthdays, DD #2's first birthday, and DS's first birthday - we will also have his 2nd at our house this year).
The girls both have Feb. birthdays and as of this year they're in the same preschool so -
For the girls' 4th and 2nd birthdays last year we did My Gym and invited DD #1's whole class (#2 was not in the school yet).
For the girls' 5th and 3rd birthdays this year - last weekend - we did My Gym and invited half of both their classes.
At the preschool people do gift giving, which I have no problem with.
Our house is small, and with lots of kids come their parents, many of whom are not comfortable just dropping their kids off, so doing it at our house is too overwhelming.
In the future, when the girls are old enough to have sleepovers with just a few kids, I totally imagine going back to parties at our house.
ETA: OP asked thoughts on parties - my thoughts are:
We just did a small party at home for H's 1st bday. Family and a couple close friends (some who have kids) and we had apps and cake. It will be the same for at least the next few years until she really gets what is going on and has friends to invite.
The opposite extreme - for my nephew's 2nd birthday, my sister hired a petting zoo and had a slew of his daycare friends plus family and some friends with their kids. Definitely not my style (or budget!).
For the LOs first birthday, we just had DH's parents. My mom, her bf, and my aunt were supposed to come down from Boston but they couldn't make it due to a hurricane we had that weekend.
In my crowd around here, no one invites friends to kids' birthday parties. It's just families. I have never attended/been invited to a friend's kid's birthday party and nearly all of our friends have kids.
For their 2nd birthday, DH and I will probably take the day off to go someplace fun with the LOs and then we'll probably just have family over for cake and presents.
I think for parties, you should invite whomever is important in the child's life. That could be just family or it could be friends.
The only thing I feel strongly about is any activity at the child's party should be things that the child can actually participate in. So, for example, doing put the tail on the donkey at a 1 yo's party (a 1 yo. that can't walk) is ridiculous b/c you're essentially expecting the adults to do it.
We just had family parties te first two years. Last year we had a bigger party with some family, his playgroup and a couple of other friends.
My rule of thumb is if you invite one from a group, you should invite them all. His birthday is in the summer or we'd either invite the whole preschool class or nobody from preschool. We invited the whole playgroup last year. I know some members of our playgroup only invited a few members of the group to their children's birthday parties. I heard endless complaints from those who weren't invited. I think they felt insulted.
I think this year we will have it somewhere. I'll have a three month old and all the party prep and clean up is a lot of work.