throwing a birthday party for a kid 101

I have to come out and admit it. Stella turned four this year and I had been too busy, every year right around this time, to throw her a birthday party. Every year for the last three years Kaspar has asked if we were going to have a birthday party for Stella? But instead of a party she has had  - the amazing cup cake day (which almost passed for a birthday party, if only Kaspar had kept his mouth shut) with her godparents; a day of Christmas related activities at Latvian school; and a morning decorating gingerbread houses, but NO birthday party. I cannot say that SHE cared much. On no. She was just fine with it. I'm not sure if she even remembers the first two years. Highly doubt it. But Kaspar does. And he has been THOROUGHLY outraged that there have been birthday parties for him (and several that he can think of!), but none for Stella. Therefore, despite the business of being too busy during this season of fun and giving and doing and and partying... all that jazz... we were set out to have a birthday party for Stella this year.

But it ain't as easy as it sounds.

There are the different crowds, the list making, the place picking, the food making, the theme and the invitations, the cake and the loot bags, the games that need to be organized and the prizes to go with the games, the decorations and the thank you cards that follow. Oh, dear God! These days throwing a birthday party can seem as daunting as organizing a wedding. Whatever happened to just boiling a few hot dogs, feeding the kids some sponge cake and then letting them run wild for a few hours on a sugar high while parents sit around comparing battle wounds and horror stories? I'm most certainly pro the latter version. Is that the old fashioned way of doing things? Doesn't anyone ever do that anymore? Come on...

Who has the time to figure out who is ON the list and who is OFF the list. Of course the kid will want to invite the entire class, if given a chance. Living in Toronto, that would be about 28 kids (plus siblings if they're close in age). And then there are the kids in the family and the kids of closest friends and the kids from music class and the ones from ballet class... and the list goes on. No way! I suggest that you don't even open that can of worms. Kids should have no say in who they invite! And as I found out this year, the best way of making sure you don't end up with too many kids in your house (even if you, yourself are making the list) is to send out invites no more then a week ahead of time.

As for picking a place for the party - there are so many places that will offer to host a party for your children, but I've learned to be weary of these. They are similar to airlines advertising seat sales to Florida during school break. Once you add all the bells and whistles, make it round trip v/s one way and pay various taxes - oh my! Even though you're guaranteed to have something broken in the house once a handful of four year old's on sugar trample through and you are certainly going to have some sticky floors and sticky walls, too, if you're lucky... it's still way better to have it in the house then to have to pay the "surprise" bill at the end of the day. At least you know what you're dealing with, right?

I have no idea when and why pizza became the food of choice for kids' parties, but ordering pizza for a party does seem to be the rule of thumb these days. I don't like it, necessarily. My complaint is that you only have two kinds of choices. There are either the cheap, chain, bad for you, fast food type of pizza places that cost parents mere pennies a slice, but don't taste any good and the list of ingredients for the sauces and the doe include variety of words that are not only NOT readable but most certainly not understandable (unless you have a chemistry degree). The second option are the "little guy" pizza places, most of which are gourmet pizzas with variety of fancy toppings, spiced sauces, fancy meats, thin crusts and prices that are through the roof. What happened to the happy in-between? Where did they all go? Kids just want something bread-y with tomato sauce and cheese, how had can it be to bake that? Where did all those Italians with their family run little pizza places disappear to?

Oh... I'm running out of time tonight.... This one is to be continued...