there are many different ways to throw a kid’s birthday party. i won’t begin to describe them all, because each birthday party is as unique as the kid is receiving it.
my kids get small parties. i invite my ILs because they won’t come unless i literally send a written invitation with a date and time, as well as a phone call the day before. anybody else who shows up is there merely by chance, and i’m okay with that. our birthdays are mostly an unplanned, relaxed affair. i don’t throw big parties with games and stuff… i let my children pick out the cake they want, the theme they want on the wrapping paper, and the dinner they’ll have that evening. we eat lunch, have cake for desert, then open presents. the rest of the day is devoted to playing with said presents, and chit chat for the adults. like i said… small party. it’s not because i don’t want my kids to have friends over… i do. i just don’t know how to deal with large amounts of children like that. i freak out when i have one person over, let alone a bunch of strange sugar-fueled kids. maybe in the future, if he makes good enough friends that he actually sees them outside of school, i’ll invite that friend over… but big soiree’s are just not my thing. they make me too anxious.
today, i took my son to a birthday party for one of his classmates. i get nervous dropping my kids off at birthday parties, because i literally don’t know the people who’s house i’m leaving my kid at. i try to shove that fear deep down inside for the two hours necessary for my kid to have fun, because i don’t want him to grow up being the weird kid with the obviously OCD mom.
i was a little more comfortable with this birthday party, because it wasn’t at a house but a community center. i immediately knew which room it was being held in by the large amounts of children running around and the noise volume floating from the doorway. it was utter chaos. good chaos, though. the kind of chaos that you just know precedes a really kick ass birthday party. a Carnival themed birthday party.
immediately, i noticed the smell of popcorn which was, of course, being popped into the industrial movie theater popcorn popper they had. (rented?) they were dishing it out into those carnival styled red and white striped cardboard popcorn boxes, at least one per kid. (there are 19 students in my son’s class, and it’s required that a parent send an invitation to everybody if they want to send one to anybody) they had hotdogs going on a carnival style heater, cotton candy, cupcakes, and tons and tons of balloons all over the place. there was a very nice pin the tail on the donkey game in one corner, a beanbag tossing game in another corner, and all the tables were decked out with colorful tablecloths, balloons and glitter. kids were running everywhere.
even the invitations were really cool… they followed with the carnival theme, and were flat cardboard popcorn boxes with the popcorn part being the printed pull out invitation.
when i picked my son up an hour and a half later, he had a handful of balloons on sticks, a box of cotton candy, and proudly declared that he ate a hotdog on a bun, popcorn, and a cupcake. he also had a plastic blow up circus tiger, and a carnival picture of himself and two other children, printed out on a folding card to look like they had stuck their heads in those cheesy carnival cutout photo ops. he had a temporary tattoo of a circus clown on his hand, and his cheeks and ears were bright red with excitement and sugar rush.
oh.
so that’s how you do it.
maybe i should have stayed with him and taken notes?
but then again, there’s no way in hell i could ever afford to throw a party like that… over 20 party favors? a full meal for each guest? (think about it- popcorn, hotdogs, cupcakes, cotton candy, and lollipops…) all those balloons? and the equipment rental? (helium for the ballooons, the hotdog cookers, popcorn poppers, games, the room itself and picture printer…) not to mention all the little things that i haven’t even thought of plus and actual gift for my kid.
i just can’t imagine the stress involved in throwing a party like that. is it just me, or is that a little overboard for a 7 year old? i could see inviting 3-4 kids over for something like that, but with over 20 children around 7 years old, i’d find a nice corner to bang my head in by the time it was over. but some parents are super-parents, and a super-parent i am not.
also… what kind of etiquette is involved in a birthday party of that size? the card didn’t say to rvsp, so i just send my son to school with instructions to tell his friend he’d be there. also on the invitation, which i never thought of, was “gift suggestions” in facebook update style. (i’m not kidding) they said “[insert kids picture and name]… likes hotwheels, marbles, and gift cards”. now, at first i thought it was thoughtful of them to help us out with gifts for their kid, but now i’m begining to think differently. i mean… if i understood my son properly, this kid ended up with tons of hotwheels. (several of the same one) so what if he got stuck with a gift he didn’t particularly like? at least he wouldn’t have gotten the 6 of the same hotwheel set had they not been so presumptuous as to tell us what to buy. or at least be a little less brand-specific. but then again, my son also declared that HE wanted an ipod for HIS birthday, because his friend got one for his, and he can play games on it. (ummmm… no. maybe other 7 year olds can handle the responsibility of an expensive piece of equipment like that, but not mine) these people clearly aren’t hurting for money.
everything just seemed to be so big at this party. it was like heaven in a rented room for a kid.
it made me feel entirely inadequate as a mom, because i know i won’t ever throw a kick ass party like that for my kid. that’s not wrong, is it?
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