My 1st-grader has been to more classmates’ birthday parties than I ever went to — in all my 17 years of schooling. And way more extravagant ones.
When I was a kid, every classmate’s birthday party was in an unfinished basement with folding chairs and Pin the Tail On the Donkey. And a jumbo bag of pretzels. Clearly either I was a deprived child, or times have changed.
These days, the child’s birthday party has become an annual bar mitzvah, and everybody is expected to have one.
The ritual requirements include a special venue or a special theme. Or both. This year we were stumped for either.
While we’ve always wanted to go retro and host at home, we simply couldn’t reconcile ourselves with the idea of ten or twenty kids and their parents tramping through our house in January with all the drippy coats and slushy boots and mounds of hats and scarves and mittens. Because this ain’t LA here, folks; this is Chicago. There is always snow in mid-January. Three years ago, fully two feet of it fell on the very morning of the party. It was a princess party. Picture a line of little Cinderellas in parkas and hip waders.
So, first, we needed a venue that was not our house. And not overdone already. Like Chuck E. Cheese (though, cheesy as it sounds (and is), Chuck E. does make it easy for parents to throw a party kids will like, even if it did take us a week to get our hearing back), or the big bounce-house emporium that we’ve been to at least 20 times. My wife has always loved the idea of a party at that cute little cooking class where the kids all get to make their own cake or pizza or Tartelettes de Framboises au Mascarpone. But we had too many kids to fit there.
Then we had a real brain wave. Go to the movies! At least two theaters near our house stage birthday parties for kids. One even has a dedicated party room.
All we needed to do was check to see what would be playing and if it would be kid-friendly, then give them a credit card number over the phone. Except there was a problem. They wouldn’t be able to tell us what was playing until
the Monday or Tuesday before the party, leaving us five days to get invitations out, RSVPs back, and all the other preparation you need to do with an actual head count in advance. Oh, and if it was all slasher flicks that week, we’d be up a tree without a chainsaw.
But we did not give up easily. It occurred to us that the specialty (read, artsy) theaters schedule features weeks, even months, in advance. Within minutes, I had found one showing a cool outer space movie that our daughter would love! On her actual birthday! It had never-been-seen-before footage shot in space too. How perfect.
Okay, it might come off as a little pretentious when the other parents opened an invitation for their six- or seven-year-old to attend a 90-minute documentary film about a Russian space station at the local art house cinémathèque (the theater’s word, not mine, so you know I’m not kidding). But I really thought it was our best option at the time.
Until we saw the line in the listing, “In English and Russian with English subtitles.” Deal breaker. Some of the first-graders are still struggling to read “c-a-t.” Imagine a baffled group of seven-year-olds in foreign environment, watching a foreign film for way longer than their normal attention span and trying to make sense of the little white letters on the bottom of the screen that read “magneto-flux phlegmometer.” In Russian.
Nope. Wasn’t gonna happen.
Finally, with less than two weeks to go, we stumbled upon an art studio only three or four blocks from school that did art parties for kids, and by some miracle they had an opening when we needed it. They would even provide the goody bags, and the price would be even less than going to the movies.
We just had to bring some pizza and cupcakes and fairy wings for all the girls, and we were good to go. As a bonus, since we bought the cupcakes at the grocery store (cheap) instead of going to the fancy bakery for a cake (expensive), the fairy wings were effectively free.
Best of all, I loved the look of this place. It was exactly like somebody’s unfinished basement!
This blog made me smile with memories of parties extravanganza and the other years where I simply “forgot” to organize the party. By the time that child or children (of the three) woke up to the fact that (s)he didn’t have a party, I could say, “Oops, well it’s too late for this year as your birthday was 3 months ago, but remind me next year and we’ll throw a doozy.” Of course, at some point, you actually do have to throw a party; they won’t take that excuse for more than 3 years running. Trust me, I ran with it as long as I could.
We always hold our birthday parties at home. We usually have a theme to go along with the party, but we try to keep it simple.
We don’t do gift bags at the end of the party either; we do books! All those little trinkets that the kids will play with once and throw away: the miniature note pads and worthless erasers and other such drivel–those are all just a waste of money. And books are something the kids will actually use.
What we do have at our birthday parties is adult beverages. All the dads come to our birthday parties because they know they will be beer there.
And we always have some sort of adult music to keep the adults entertained. The kids know how to entertain themselves, it’s the adults you have to keep from getting bored.
People always tell us they had a great time at our parties, so we must be doing something right.
“All the dads come to our birthday parties because they know they will be beer there.”
Where do you live? And when is the next party? My invitation’s in the mail, right?
Ha ha! In June. My boy will be turning six.