Tips for throwing your baby’s first birthday party
- Keep things as easy as possible for YOU, the mom/hostess. When I was planning Baby Boy’s party, I heard some peeps of “What about the coffee and tea?” and “You have to have coffee and tea!” I chose not to, and I was VERY happy with that decision. Whenever I’ve done coffee and tea for a gathering, I’ve spent all my time in the kitchen making it, pouring it, serving it, and refilling cups, etc. I wanted to ENJOY the party! Plus I didn’t want any hot liquids around so many babies and toddlers. Huge paranoia!
- Consider cupcakes instead of cake. I baked Baby Boy his very own smash cake (so cute!), but stuck with cupcakes for the guests for two important reasons. First of all, because I love cupcakes and think they’re super-adorable (especially with the little toppers I made out of cardstock and toothpicks). But the other deciding factor was THEY ARE EASIER. With cake, I would have been the one cutting it and serving it and organizing plates and forks for each piece. With cupcakes, I arranged them on a special table before the party started, and once Baby Boy was attacking his smash cake, I simply invited people to help themselves. Stacks of plates and napkins on the table = easy peasy, and people could eat as many as they wanted.
- Keep the food kid-friendly. I was serving adults, but also quite a few babies and toddlers, so I didn’t want anything that could be dangerous for them. I stuck with cheesies (HUGE hit with everyone), cheese, crackers, Goldfish crackers, fresh fruit, sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies, and cupcakes. I purposely did NOT serve anything with nuts, or anything small and hard (like candy). I even vetoed the idea of a raw veggie tray because I kept envisioning toddlers choking on baby carrots when no one was watching.
- Make things easy for the parents. I know what it’s like to feed a toddler. It’s messy! You have to cut everything up! So I put packages of baby wipes around the room for easy clean-ups, as well as MANY stacks of napkins, and had a station with a cutting board and knife for chopping up fruit or cheese into baby-sized pieces.
- Have sippy-cups for little guests. I got this idea from the party C threw for her son’s first birthday. Genius! Sure, parents usually travel with a sippy cup, but it’s always already filled with something. Buy a bunch of those Take ‘n’ Toss sippy cups, wash them, and keep them on the drinks’ table — parents can fill ’em up with juice, lemonade or water.
- Designate a play area. We had rented a large room (a hall, I guess) for Baby Boy’s party, since we were still in our (teeny) condo at the time. As you can see in the above photo, I arranged the room around a play area in the very centre. Babies could sit there and play together, while the adults had a 360 degree view of them. It was very handy!
- Keep the decorations kid-safe. I bought a package of balloons, but only affixed them high up on the walls (making one of those banners). I didn’t have any balloons scattered around or left where kids could reach them. I know they’re fun to play with, but we had very, very tiny guests (the oldest was just two), and I didn’t want to risk someone popping one and swallowing a piece.
- Choose a colour scheme. Once I decided on red, yellow and blue, it was so easy to pull together the decorations. I bought a crapload of plastic tablecloths from the Dollar Store in those three colours, and used them on all of the tables. It made a dingy hall so bright and cheerful! Little Sis contributed by making the gorgeous paper poms. They got SO many compliments and were “adopted” at the end of the party to decorate my aunt’s bridge club — they were way too pretty to toss!
- Have a guestbook of some kind. While I loved the idea of taking guests’ photos with a special sign, or doing something elaborate like that, I opted to buy one of those photo mats that you can sign with a special marker. I made a sign that invited people to sign it, and we left the party with a beautiful collection of messages and notes to our birthday boy. Pop a photo into it, hang it on the wall, and you’ve got a lasting reminder of the day they turned one.
- Show off their first year! I had a table set up with scrapbooks from Baby Boy’s first year, and hung strings of photos along the walls. Some of the guests hadn’t seen Baby Boy since he was a newborn, so it was nice for them to see him grow and change over his first 12 months.
It’s Baby Signing Time
I need to meet a deaf friend. Seriously. You know why? Because I am KICKING ASS at American Sign Language!
Remember when I bought those flash cards a few months back, and tried to teach Baby Boy some signs? They totally didn’t work (damn impulse buy), but I was still in love with the idea. Babies signing! Adorbs! And handy!
Just over a month ago, I spotted a group on Facebook that offered baby-parent sign language classes in our area, and signed up immediately.
(BTW, it’s called Sophia’s Hands, if you live in Nova Scotia … or don’t mind flying here for sign languages classes. The instructor, Kelley Banfield, is super-sweet and SUCH a good teacher.)
We did three weeks of classes (twice a week for an hour each), and LOVED it. I don’t know who loved it more, me or Baby Boy.
Probably me, as I was actually listening to the teacher and learning the signs. Baby Boy preferred to run around the room like mad, open other peoples’ diaper bags, take our their wallets, drop the teacher’s cell phone through a railing.*
During each class, we learned new signs and sang songs that incorporated the signs. We learned I learned a surprising amount of signs in just three weeks. I hoarded each new sign greedily, because as Little Sis reminds me, I “don’t do anything just halfway.” I practiced them daily. I memorized the songs. I mastered the alphabet so I could finger-spell anything I couldn’t sign.
We also bought the first DVD in the Baby Signing Time series, and Baby Boy LOVES it. It’s full of cute babies doing the signs, and lots of singing. I love it, too, luckily, because we watch it almost daily.
But … my kid still can’t/won’t really sign.
He is a stubborn boy. An “independent young cuss,” as I sometimes call him (yeah, another Laura Ingalls Wilder reference). He absolutely loves when I sign, or when I sign the songs and sign along, but he doesn’t sign back. AT ALL, except for one.
His only sign? “All done.” He does it when he’s in his high chair and doesn’t want to eat anymore. Good sign, yeah, but … ONE?!?!?!?!?!?!
And so I continue to learn new signs, practice them, and sing all of the songs (“Put your fingertips together for more, more, MORE!”), and hope that Baby Boy starts picking up some more signs. We’ll be taking classes again when they start up in the fall, and I’ve got to stay on top of my signing game!
In the meantime, I really need a hearing-impaired friend.
Someone who GETS ME!
*The teacher’s phone was a fossil, and she totally handed it to him to play with. Still, I don’t think she expected him to drop it down a flight of stairs. Embarrasment city, population = me.
Not Me Monday: Diaper rash edition
- I was not totally smug about Baby Boy never really having a diaper rash. Except THAT ONE TIME he was teething, and it was no biggie, because like, he’s cloth-diapered, and they don’t really GET rashes, so, yeah …
- My smugness did not totally come back to haunt me when Baby Boy got a wicked-awful diaper rash last week (though he wassssss in disposables, so … maybe I remain smug about the cloth diapers?)
- When I took over Baby Boy’s diaper to let him “get some air” while running around my mom’s living room, I definitely did not giggle when he squatted like a bear in the woods and peed AND pooed on her carpet
- I would never embarrass my son on the internet by describing it as … a messy poo
- Also, I did not laugh at Darling Husband, who was (unreasonably) frantic at the accident
- Definitely did not tell him how many times Baby Boy peed on our own carpet
- When Baby Boy’s poor bum looked worse, I was the model of decorum, and never said anything insulting like “Eww! It’s like ZITS in his BUM CRACK!”
- I did not almost puke when Googling for a photo for his post (avert your eyesssssss!)
From cloth to ‘sposies: "It’s like switching from underwear to just taping a piece of Kleenex down there."
Yes, it’s true. I have temporarily stopped using cloth diapers.
*Cue sad music*
As long as we’re living with my mom, we will be using Pampers. Our beloved BumGenius diapers are packed away in storage. Sitting in a plastic crate where their cuteness will go unappreciated.
*Sniffle*
Why the hiatus from cloth?
Well, my mom doesn’t own a washing machine.
Whaaaat? I know, right?!?
It broke when I was about 18, and coincidentally, that’s the time our teeny tiny town opened up its very own laundramat with … I don’t know what it’s called … full service? Where they wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you? Niiiiice, right?
We started using that, and it was so convenient that Mom’s never looked back. Sending the laundry out saved majorly on power and water (since she’s on a well, that’s a big factor). Up until we moved in last week, she’s lived alone for years, and sends in maybe one basket a week.
But … no washing machine here = no cloth diapers here.
It also means I drag all our laundry over to my in-laws’ place and use their beautiful front-loading washer and dryer because I can’t bring myself to pay someone to do my laundry.
It’s been just over a week now, and it’s going fine. I guess. I just really, really, REALLY prefer cloth. Disposables are just sort of nasty when you’re not used to them, because they’re so thin and kind of ratty-looking. I miss the cuteness of Baby Boy running around in a bright green or bright blue cloth diaper. I miss seeing it peek out from the waistband of his shorts.
Of course, I don’t miss scraping pooey diapers out, so … I’d say it’s going OK.
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