THE BIG (BIRTHDAY) BANG THEORY
Are you planning your child’s first birthday party this year? Let me share something with you they don’t tell you when you take your little miracle home from the hospital. The evolution of the children’s birthday party is not unlike a twelve-step recovery program. In other words, it takes you (the parent) 12 years to realize that the best kids’ parties involve nothing more than a frozen pizza, a carton of Haagen-Dazs and some pitted black olives for the little darlings to stick on their fingers (but be sure to get the extra large ones so they can’t stick them up their noses – nothing ruins a party more than a trip to the emergency with a kid that isn’t yours).
Even though you’ll throw lots of kids’ parties in your child’s lifetime, rest assured the first one will be the most ridiculous. If you’re already picturing clowns, pony rides, climbing walls, magicians, out-of-town guests and a cast of thousands for your one-year-old’s party, you need to get to a support group right awayListen as the experts explain how 20 minutes after the extravaganza starts junior will become so overwhelmed, he’ll pitch a fit, bang his head on the ground in full view of Grandma’s judgmental eyes, throw up the gourmet carrot cake, and then fall asleep in a sugar coma that’ll last at least 12 hours (which will give you plenty of time to unwrap the mountains of Little Tykes monstrosities, Fischer-Price noise makers and various other large colored plastic objects you have nowhere to store).
I speak from experience. I’m a recovering party-aholic myself. For my oldest son’s first birthday, I stayed up the entire night before papier-mâché-ing a piñata (because, you know, the store bought ones weren’t good enough) only to watch in horror the next day as it was pummeled into a gleeful pulp by 15 kids in search of the bit-sized Snickers in a sea of cheap taffy and sour balls. The pictures of my shock don’t do me justice. Rest assured, I wanted to hurt someone.
Then, of course, I had to make a cake (because, you know, the store bought ones weren’t good enough). Never mind that the only things I had ever baked at high altitude were cookies, all of which eventually found useful lives as ice hockey pucks and door stops. That’s the year I learned how to lie convincingly. I passed off my undercooked-in-the-center creation as a pudding cake. I’m sure they all believed me when I kept saying, “Uh yeah, you’re supposed to eat it with a spoon – or a straw.”
The irony of all this is that a child’s first birthday party is not for the child at all — it’s for the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, that cast of thousands I mentioned up earlier. Trust me, even though your child is the genius you always knew existed somewhere in your family tree, junior will not remember his first birthday party. So save yourself a lot of grief. When the one year mark rolls around, stick a candle in a cupcake, take some video and call it a day. Later in life, when your child asks about their first birthday, dazzle your precious darling with home movies that would make Spielberg proud. After all, why do you think God created really good editing software?
