Three birthday parties

Its been too long since I last posted, but the last few weeks have been really crazy. The great news is that we are expecting our second baby and we are really excited about it. But the last few weeks have been tough as the first trimester was very difficult this time, with S I had no neausea and due to some complications was working from home for the first trimester. This time I’ve been full time at office, morning sickness, evening sickness, general feeling of nausea the whole day and tiredness at night. Office work has also been very hectic. Anyway this is not meant to be a cribby post and now that the first trimester is passed (touchwood) let me move on.

In the last month S has attended 3 birthday parties and her reaction in each of them has been so different.

The first party was of a boy from her school. We landed up on time (I’m quite a stickler for time) and found ourselves to be the only guests there - I guess others are not as much of sticklers as I am, but after half an hour I started feeling bad for the mom organizing the party since there were still no other guests and they had really spent a lot of effort and time in organizing the party – with a tattoo artist, games, magic show etc and had budgeted quite a few people landing up. Finally 3 others from S school landed up alongwith some children from the neighbourhood. After a couple of them got tattoos I finally managed to persuade S to get a tattoo done but halfway she started getting upset –guess the whole experience of a stranger painting on her arm got a bit much for her, so the elaborate design was hurriedly changed into a flower and I whisked S away to another part of the room. S pretty much clung to me for most of the party- I had to take part with her in all the games, and just when she started to become a little confident of the surroundings and moved away from me to dance to the music, they played a game in which they had to burst balloons. S is for some strange reason scared of balloons (considering that she spent most of her first birthday party hugging a blue balloon and refusing to let go of it, this is quite strange) – I think the maid scared her by waving a balloon up and down very fast when she was younger and that experience has just scared her off balloons. They played this game (which I found quite inappropriate when kids < 2 years are there) where you have to blow balloons and burst them by sitting on them. After a couple of balloons burst S got very very clingy and started looking quite scared. I took her to another room of the house where the hosts had kept their dog- the Labrador was quite friendly and S got over her fear by watching him run around the room and jump up and down. By the time we went back to the playroom it was cake cutting time and luckily the balloon bursting had stopped. The cake was quite unique- it was a number of brownie cup cakes arranged in the form of balloons on a board. The strings connecting the brownies were drawn on the board and the arrangement looked quite pretty and it was easy to just give a brownie to each kid. After that they had the magic show and S really enjoyed this. She kept watching the magician and even learned “Abracadabra”. Her mummy had to eat all the snacks they had given her while S stuffed herself only with chips and then asked for more! Then they had dance time which S enjoyed the most- she kept dancing around the place and watching other kids dancing. Overall I think S enjoyed meeting other kids, but found the games and balloons a bit intimidating. One thing I did not like about the party was that only four of us mothers from the class of 14 landed up- I heard the mom organizing the party ask a couple of times whether the others were coming- I think she had budgeted for more. If people are not planning to come they should at least have the decency to tell the parents that they are not coming so they can plan properly- and these people had put invites in the bags of all the kids and the father had actually given the cards to some of the parents when they missed out on the cards in the bag, so its not as if they did not know. I actually asked a couple of moms why they did not come on Monday and they all had other plans- really does not take much to inform the organizing mother that you are busy, and sorry cannot make it instead of just not landing up!

The second party was not as much of a birthday party for kids as a celebration of their kids second birthday with the couple’s friends. So there was no games, only the token cake and balloons (luckily did not involve any bursting). There were however quite a few children- surprisingly all the close colleagues of my husband have had daughters, so there were mainly girls there, from 5 years of age down to S who at 18 months was the youngest. The birthday girl was extremely possessive of her toys and would shout if anyone touched them- to be fair I guess nobody would like it if all their toys were attacked by a group of children, but in this case her mom was busy organizing the food and there was no one to mind her so she was happily whacking anyone who touched her toys. Poor S got one or two jabs until I pulled her away from the toy room and distracted her with something else. But the birthday girl ended up pushing the boy too far-he took about 3 or 4 of her whacks and then lost his cool and there erupted a big fight between the two of them with the parents having to physically pick up the children and separate them. S spent most of the evening either in the corner of the toy room with 2-3 toys which the birthday girl was not specifically fond of, or else firmly ensconced on her daddy’s lap munching away on chips.

The third party was again one of the hubby’s colleagues daughters. She is 5 years old and they had organized a party at the neighbourhood Pizza Hut. There was a games host alongwith a music DJ and the party was in full swing when we reached. At first S was a bit overawed with the music and with 10-15 girls jumping up and down to the music and playing musical chairs. But she soon got into the groove of things- they played a mother and child game where S won a prize for dancing most cutely- quite unfair really since her dancing comprises of swinging from side to side, and occasionally jumping when other kids jump, but who can resist a 18 month old on the dance floor? She was quite happy with the prize since it was in a brightly coloured paper and continued to cling to it while dancing on the floor. The next game was only for older kids but S was too happy on the dance floor to be asked to go off so they had to play their games around her. She got two or three bumps and shoves from the running children but was surprisingly ok- and this is someone who is scared of ants, balloons and mostly anything new! She even relaxed enough to get a tattoo done of a flower and kept pointing to it the whole day saying flower. Of course we completely spoilt her during the party by giving her potato wedges which we were having- sometimes I feel we are really indisciplined parents- since we eat so many snacks and chips even S has picked up this habit.