OPINION
IT’S kids birthday party season at my place, which means we’ve been stuffing our face with (delicious) cake and lolly bags every weekend … and we’ve still got at least five more to get through.
My boy is almost two — an age at which parties are suddenly more about the kids than they are the parents (you can get away with a few drinks and a BBQ for the first year, the kids are probably happy to laugh at their own reflection for an hour).
This means parents can take one of two options.
Firstly, they can go all out. Hire out a play centre or the local hall. Get an entertainer dressed as spiderman or Elsa or whoever your child’s favourite character is. Order a huge birthday cake, and get the whole thing catered for.
I can see the temptation. You can outsource everything — and you don’t have your almost two-year-old grabbing at your legs demanding “I see” as you try and bake a lopsided birthday cake that will look pretty sad on Instagram compared to the gorgeous concoctions you’ve seen over the past few months.
But there is a downside. You’re setting a pretty high bar for yourself.
While two-year-olds are not quite ready for organised games (as discovered over the weekend when we tried pass the parcel while toddlers ran off to shove another cheezel in their mouth), they are pretty happily entertained by running around after a ball or each other.
And by hiring entertainment or having a fancy cake one year, there’s only one way to go in terms of party standards.
In years to come, you don’t want your kid to be looking at amazing pictures of their second birthday, only to turn around and ask why their fifth birthday was filled with sad looking cupcakes from the local supermarket, and one game of musical chairs.
So I’m going to take inspiration from an age before Instagram. A time when fairy bread was an acceptable snack, and it was OK to have orange fingers from too many twisties.
This is what I am talking about. Surely a bit of fairy bread for your kid’s party is easy to pull off? Source: News Limited
As the eldest of four kids growing up in the 80s my parents pulled off a lot of birthday parties. And they had it down pat. Find the simplest, but most impressive cake out of the Woman’s Weekly birthday cake book. Avoid the duck cake — I’ve never heard the end of how hard that one was to make. Impress the kid with your (usually non-existent) baking skills.
Younger kids — only invite a few other children. Let them run around and hopefully burn off the sugar.
Older kids — let them invite their class if they’d like (if they have a smallish class!), don’t force them if they don’t want to. Find two or three basic party games (musical chairs, pass the parcel etc.) and make them fun. Keep the kids busy for two hours and have an end time for the party.
Have a table of party food. Keep it fun. Kids are more than happy to eat party pies rather than handmade bruschetta.
That’s it. And for the most part we had fun. I do know my mother did nearly have a stroke one year when I had the whole class coming over after school and a summer storm hit. By the time we got home our place was flooded, and there just weren’t enough towels or buckets to mop everything up before the masses arrived.
So I think I’m going to take inspiration from the 80s and keep everything pretty low key. We’ll have balloons, we’ll have sausage rolls (maybe even homemade ones if you’re lucky kid), and we’ll probably stream some Wiggles music so the kids can dance to their favourite tunes.
I’ll even attempt to bake a (most likely dodgy looking) cake.
Hopefully he (and the other kids) will have fun and my husband and I won’t collapse in a ball of stress leading up to the thing.
And if all else fails, we’ll hire a barista to make babycinos next year. My kid is slightly obsessed with them.
No comments:
Write 10