toddler eating birthday tea

Birthday party pandemonium

The round of 3 year birthday parties has started.  As it’s hard to get a date for N with him likely to have the same weekend chosen as one of his NCT friends, I think we’re just going to have his cousin over for tea on his birthday, and then do a party around May time.  Hopefully then, the weather will be better and we can do an outdoor party at the farm.

The party yesterday was a sibling party, so there were lots of princesses running around amongst a few wearing Cars themed outfits.  We’d gone straight from swimming so N had changed into his party wear after that.  (Lucky, I’d taken that change of clothes as he had a major poo-explosion as he was about to sit down for tea – never great when it’s in an old style leisure centre with no baby change facilities, and nowhere to lie the child on the floor in the toilets!).

N was in his element as there were cosy coupe cars and trikes – he spotted his friend L from nursery.  It’s great that they’re pretty much inseparable, but it was brilliant for both him and me to be able to catch up with NCT friends as we’d not seen them for a while.

I love watching the children doing pass the parcel.  There’s always 4 types of children:

  1. The parcel hogger…never wants to pass it on because they know exactly what they could get when the music stops.
  2. The ‘plays by the rules’…N’s one of these.  I think it’s mostly because he’s got not idea of what’s happening (even some way into the game.  He always passes it on immediately ensuring the next person has their go.
  3. The ‘can’t be bothered…stays for a bit, gets their go at ripping off their layer of paper and then wanders off
  4. The ‘I have no idea what’s going on’…the parent usually helps and just does the passing on.  The child is often in the circle, but just watching everyone else.

N’s going to be one of those swotty children – always wanting things to be right and fair.  He definitely takes after me in that.

A bouncy castle, some soft play blocks, a party tea and the party was just right for this age group.

Of course there were few tears, an accident, balloon stealing, but generally nothing too traumatic for the parents in tow.  And not a huge sugar rush in the evening either despite a pinata game and cake.

Maybe lulling me into a sense of false security, in making me believe it can’t be that hard running a 3 year old’s birthday party!

What sort of parties have you done for toddlers/pre-schoolers?

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2 Comments

  1. We’ve done NCT Christmas parties before for them, but it’s hard even in the larger of our houses to fit all the families in (we’ve also got extra babies now too). So definitely doing a half year for him. Spread the parties through the year!

  2. For monkey’s first birthday we had family and god parents round for a party, every year since I’ve just had his NCT buddies round for a tea party. This year was rather manic as we now have a number of next generation boys too, and my living room is rather small. One of our group always has a half birthday party in June, it works brilliantly, all the kids run riot in their back garden.

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