As a mom of six kids, I’ve had the opportunity to throw a few birthday parties. Over time my methodology has evolved and simplified. This past week, my youngest child turned one, and it made me think back to the differences between when my oldest turned one compared to my youngest. If you are the mother to an only child, you might think that your birthdays will always be large events with pony rides for children who can’t even walk. You might even think you won’t ever forget any detail of your child’s social life. I’m not here to ruin those ideas for you, I’m just here to tell you what happened in our family!
Differences between the First First birthday and the Last First Birthday:
- Invitations: When Samuel turned one I carefully planned a train themed birthday complete with printed and mailed invitations. When Camilla turned one, I tried to make sure her siblings showed up at the table (I wasn’t entirely successful).
- Guest List: When Samuel turned one we had quite a few friends who had children the same age. We ended up inviting over twenty people to our home. This included friends, relatives and co-workers. Now that we have 6 kids, we are our own invite list, and we didn’t mention a party to anyone else!
- The Cake: The biggest thing for the train birthday was the train cake. I ordered a special cake pan, and I stayed up half the night putting my Wilton cake decorating class to good use. I may or may not have cried when I couldn’t get the perfect shade of fire engine red. I may also have clogged the sink when I tried to throw a whole batch of ruined frosting down the drain! It was also very important to me that the cake be made from scratch. This week I had to make cupcakes for the swim team party, and Camilla had a small cake (Betty Crocker) that I made with the left over batter.
- The Gifts: I’m pretty much the same with gifts. In fact it’s probably gotten a bit worse because my other kids want to buy gifts for their siblings. My theory is that a one year old doesn’t really understand if a gift is the latest or greatest, so I’ve never really gone and shopped too much. Samuel got a train (obviously) and Camilla got a walker plus a bunch of things from the dollar spot courtesy of her brothers and sister!
- The Date: When Samuel turned one it was important to me to recognize the day. Last week we ended up have the swim team party on Camilla’s birthday, which meant that our celebration was a day late (and we didn’t even wrap the presents!)
This is not to say that we don’t throw parties. I’ve just learned over time to scale back my own expectations for children’s parties. The most important thing is that my kids have fun, and that I keep my sanity!
p.s. We couldn’t even protect this year’s cake from my three year old, hence the missing chunk!
