It's not my party, but I'm still gonna cry if I want to.

Let me start by saying I love birthdays.  I love my birthday.  I love other people's birthdays.  I love half-birthdays and un-birthdays too.  Wouldn't it be nice if every birthday party was the biggest bestest birthday party ever?!  Well it can't be, so get over it.  And better yet, help your kids get over it too.

You know there are some families who never have birthday parties.  Is that a crime against childhood or just a brilliant mom who set her standards really low?  It's hard to say.

No matter how much time I spend on Pinterest, I'm never going to be able to throw the best birthday party ever.  I just can't.  And I definitely can't do it year after year for five individual kids.  I'm a mom, not an extravagant event coordinator.  My goals in life do not include out-doing Suzie's mommy by throwing the most over-the-top fun princess party the world has ever known. Sorry kids.

Given the opportunity, most kids will always complain.  The birthday child will say, I want this or I want that.  The non-birthday children will whine, how come she got this? or he got that?  So don't give them the opportunity.  Heading into a birthday, you've got to be prepared with a battle strategy or they'll frost you and serve you up as a party treat.

As a mom you can't throw a party for one kid when you feel like it, and then just fizzle out on the next kid, right?  It's not fair.  So what can you do?  I'm gonna let you in on the secret to my success.  Here it is: Set your standards low from the beginning and keep them low!  If your oldest gets an amazing sweet-sixteen party, the rest of your kids will expect one too.  If you never do much for birthdays and then your "baby" turns five and gets to go to Disneyland for their birthday, you will never hear the end of it.  Ever.  So start small, and stay small.

I realized pretty quickly that I couldn't do big parties for my kids year after year (it's too much work and too much money!). So I set boundaries early on what I was willing to do.  And I clearly explain those boundaries to my kids so they know what to expect, and they are allowed to hold me to it.  Having birthday guidelines helps both me and the kids know that no one is going to get shortchanged if mommy has a bad month or year or years.



So here are our birthday rules.

• The family always goes out to eat during the birthday week, and the birthday child gets to pick the restaurant.
• Every fourth birthday is a big party (age 4, 8, 12, 16).  Lots of friends, party bags, piñatas, sleepover, the works!
• Every even numbered but non-fourth birthday is a small party (age 6, 10, 14).  One or two friends, cake, and pizza.  That's it.
• All odd numbered birthdays get only a family party.  No friends.  We pretend it's a party, but really it's just our family eating cake together.

Eating out can be expensive, so if we are feeling the urge to eat out but can't justify the expense, we try to look ahead and see if we can use somebody's birthday as an excuse.  This year I knew my son was going to want to go to Chuck-E-Cheese for his birthday dinner.  I had a coupon that allowed me to buy $25 worth of tokens for $15, but it expired two months before his birthday.  So knowing that was what he was going to want, I bought the tokens ahead of time and saved them until his birthday.  When his birthday rolled around and we started talking about his birthday dinner, I gently coaxed him into the idea that it would be more fun to eat a cheap frozen pizza at home, and then we could use his dinner money to buy tokens instead (tokens that I had already bought of course).  He gladly excepted my plan, and for $15 the family had a great night out playing games and he was more than thrilled with his birthday.  Now it is possible that he could have changed his mind and not wanted to go to Chuck-E-Cheese after all, but even if he did, I could have saved the tokens until the next birthday rolled around.

Some years things don't go as well as hoped.  Last year was not a great year for birthdays.  My twelve year old has a December birthday.  December is a really rotten month to have a birthday in anyway, right?  Last year should have been a big party year for her, but it wasn't.  She knows and I know that we owe her a big birthday party.  So this year she intends to collect on the owed birthday.  When we tried to go out for my ten year old's birthday, the place she wanted to go was closed.  She had a hard time choosing a new restaurant to go to, so we kept putting off her birthday dinner week after week.  We just had her birthday dinner last month.  Her birthday was 11 months ago!  We owed her, and she knew it.  It took time, but we eventually delivered.

Sometimes meeting kids' expectations can be hard to do, and you're going to have to roll with the punches.  When one of my boys turned five, we forgot to review the birthday rules to him. He woke up on his birthday assuming that all his friends would be over any minute to wish him a happy birthday and eat cake.  I am not going to tell a five year old (on his birthday no less!) that none of his birthday expectations are going to come true.  We called up some neighbors, made a cake, and had a party.  Then we very thoroughly explained the birthday rules again to all the kids so that we could avoid a similar problem in the future. 


When it's time for a big party, I try to deliver whatever the kids ask for, but on my terms.  I set the budget.  If they want a piñata, we do a piñata.  If I can afford it I buy one from the store.  If I can't, I make one at home.  Same with cakes, and invitations, and crafts, and games, etc.  After Valentine's day I buy up all the clearance napkins, plates, baggies, and party favors.  Pink hearts are perfect for little girl parties.  After Halloween, you'll find a lot of party supplies featuring monsters or aliens that little boys will love.  A little forethought goes a long way.  You could spend money on party bags and spend money on a craft or you could just buy cheap-o paper lunch sacks and let the kids color them and use them as your craft activity and your goodie bags.  You could buy cupcakes and buy a party game.  Or you could make homemade cupcakes and let the kids frost them in place of a party game.  See where I'm going with this?

Every family's needs and resources are different.  We all have varying traditions and expectations.  So figure out what you want your traditions to be.  Remember it's your family, so you set the rules.  What do you want your gold standard for birthdays to be?


Happy Birthday!

Marcia

P.S. Because I know you are all dying to know, I'm going to tell you my favorite birthday present!  I'm super cheap so I don't like my husband to spend a lot of money on me (or anything else for that matter), but I do want to get something on my birthday - he made the mistake one year of thinking that I am so cheap I wanted no presents: WRONG!  He only made that mistake once...  So one year I woke up to find that my kids and husband had taped about 100 miniature candy bars to the walls all over my house.  It was awesome!  For the rest of the week, I could walk around my house and whenever I wanted a snack there was a treat waiting for me right there on the wall!  That's actually kind of my idea of heaven...