Birthdays are difficult. As moms, we use our kids’ birthdays as a time to reflect on the past year, wiping a tear or two away at how quickly it is all flying by. We take this occasion to marvel at how much our kids have grown, their accomplishments over the last 12 months. We take note of maturity levels that seem to have sky-rocketed along with growing appetites. To us, birthdays can be an emotional time that make us take out the baby books, ooh and aah over newborn photos, and stare at our kids wistfully at the dinner table until they ask us to stop and hand over the bowl of peas (well OK, my boys have never voluntarily asked for green vegetables, but maybe other kids do). To them, however, their birthday is the one day each year that is all about them — it’s time to get their party on.
After we wipe away those tears and finally pass the bowl of peas, moms’ focus turns to party planning. I find this difficult each year because, just as their age changes, so do their interests. When my boys were little, I pulled the “they don’t have a clue” card and held small family celebrations or special dinners out where they were allowed to stuff their tiny faces with ice cream sundaes and go to restaurants with automated dinosaurs (which totally backfired, by the way, because not all small children like a T-Rex to roar and pretend to be on the attack during dinner).
As they got a little older, we threw parties at the neighborhood pool, backyard parties with games and face painters and destination parties at their favorite bounce-out-the-energy locations. My oldest will be nine years old this year and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to figure out party ideas that I’m good with and which appeal to his sudden development into a pre-pre-teen, cool-dude, don’t-hold-my-hand persona. A few ideas:
Sleepover: We let Max have a sleepover for his eighth birthday and, to be honest, I don’t know if a year will be enough time to recover and let him do it again. Fair warning – sleepovers are not a good idea for anyone with treasured knickknacks, white furniture or who require a certain amount of sleep. I’m not sure what sleepovers are like with little girls, but all I know is that clean-up from Max’s party felt like we were recovering from a fraternity party with eight-year-olds. On the flip side, was this one of the most fun birthdays that Max has ever had? Absolutely. He still talks about it – a longstanding dispute alive among his friends over who stayed up the latest that night. Would I recommend this for a birthday party? Yes, but with a limited number of kids and structured activities to keep the chaos relatively contained.
Theme Party: Max recently went to a friend’s birthday party who had a Mad Science theme. This mom is absolutely brilliant; she understood that letting eight-year-olds loose in her house would be a disaster without some sort of organized activity, so she hired someone to come from the Mad Science group that offers after-school programs at our school. Brilliant. The boys’ attention was kept focused as they watched, learned, and created the stuff of little boy dreams (think green slime), thus preserving any knickknacks and the mom’s sanity.
Jump, Jump, Jump Around: Watch and learn. That’s what I do; I watch my friends and learn from them. Bounce houses, although still fun for my boys, are sometimes intended for smaller kids than the one in my house who’s built like a brick house and thinks that I can still carry him up the stairs. The last birthday party that my boys attended was at Sky Zone, a trampoline park. Another brilliant move by a mom who gets it. With trampoline dodge ball, basketball, and the opportunity to flip into a foam pit, my boys actually said the words that I so seldom hear… “Mommy, I’m tired.” Heaven.
