susanna turns three on monday! thinking back on the seven birthdays we've now celebrated between our two children, including the one we just hosted yesterday, i've learned a few things.
The Top Ten Lessons I've Learned From Children's Birthday Parties
1) take full advantage of warm weather birthdays, and plan parties outdoors. (i learned this after liam's first birthday, when i had 45 people in my house and found icing encrusted on the bottom of my couch a month later.)
2) does any one-year old really need 45 people singing them "happy birthday"? why do all first-time parents do this to themselves?
3) avoid hosting on your own turf if at all possible. playgrounds and parks were invented for a reason. use them. (i learned this after an overzealous three-year old guest trucked inside our house from the party in the back yard and somehow caused our toilet to overflow, which we did not notice until we had cleaned up the back yard and returned inside to find water seeping out of the powder room.)
4) plan B? who needs a plan B? having absolutely no alternate rain plan is what i call living on the edge. a life filled with danger makes me feel alive.
5) cake is overrated. not only is it a pain to slice and serve, but you've then got small children wielding sharp plastic forks in close proximity to other small children's eyeballs. not to mention the fact that these small children have often not quite mastered the art of blowing out candles, and let's face it, there's nothing appetizing about seeing a small arc of saliva being sprayed all over the food you're about to eat. cupcakes are the way to go -- unless you opt for another kind of individual pastry (see #10).
6) no gifts, please. we need another toy with 30 tiny parts like we need a hole in the head. little kids don't really give a flying flip if they received presents or not; they're just excited to see their friends and have their own special day. (however, i will acknowledge that this can't last forever. marketing and greed take over about when they hit five. sigh.)
7) if you're going to hire a balloon artist, make sure he knows what he's doing. i dredged this photo up from our archives, from a little boy's fourth birthday party in our neighborhood in asheville. (i think it's supposed to be a sword. )
8) i'm not a fan of fill-in-the-blank thank you notes. seriously, how long does it take you to write your own, "thank you for the lego set. i love it! i'm glad you came to my party." ? how lazy can we possibly be? *
9) rise and shine. we hosted a morning party for the first time yesterday, and i don't think we'll ever have one in the afternoon again. it wasn't yet hot, we didn't have to deal with scheduling around late naps, and everyone had the rest of the day ahead of them. not quite sure why it took me this long to figure that out. coffee for the adults, doughnuts for the kids. easy.
10) and last but not least ... never underestimate how snooty us north carolinians can be about our doughnuts. you wouldn't have believed the backlash we got when we mentioned the possibility of serving dunkin donuts. around here, it's krispy kreme or bust, baby.
* i have many more lessons i've learned over the years, but i must stop. i really need to get started on last year's christmas thank you notes.
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