The understatement that is…turning six

A child’s birthday should be a big thing for them.  But I think this year, N turning six was more exciting for me than it was for him. Unless he’s just very good at hiding his excitement (unlikely, although he is fairly understated).  Unfortunately he had a bit of a snuffly nose before his birthday weekend, so that might have dampened his excitement.

Birthday presents

We may as well have not given N any presents. Just a number balloon did the job – he loved it, although getting photos that he agreed to pose for be in was challenging.  Thankfully he did agree in the end.  Because how can you have a birthday without any photos. Mind you, he drew the line at standing against the wall with it, instead I had to point and snap and hope one came out well, as he ran across the garden with it.

N loved his main present which was walkie talkies.  They’re decent ones – straight away he decided that he needed to give one to his cousin down the road so they could chat in the mornings before school and before bed.  Amazingly, they do work 1.5 miles away across the fields and through 2 stone built houses, and a week later the OH tuned them in to the other walkie talkies they use on the shoots and they used them for that day as well.  They are a lot of fun, I just have to hope they don’t get lost.

A pair of next size up John Deere overalls were well received, and the other favourite was a children’s encyclopaedia.  He’s loved that, and so far each day has wanted to look up something new…and do the ‘guess the flags’ game with his dad.  N’s getting good at recognising flags, so maybe he will end up a bit of a geographer like me!

Other birthday party

Because his party wasn’t until the week after I’d offered that after swimming we could go out for lunch somewhere.  But N turned me down.  He didn’t want to go out at all.  So we just went to his swimming lesson, where he kept his birthday quiet (in contrast to a younger child in the other class who was telling everyone), then headed home to mooch around until the party he had to go to in the afternoon.

I was optimistic that he’d enjoy the party.  He was good friends with the party girl, and it was full of friends from school.  But after joining in with balloon play, then being one of the musical statues winners, I thought he’d be fine. But then he decided he just wanted food so sat at the tables and refused to take part any further.  Then after food, he wanted to leave with 20 minutes to go.  Once I’d got him home I realised he had a really high temperature so no wonder he wasn’t in the party mood.  And it explained the wanting to hang around at home.

Birthday food

I’d made a cake the night before.  Fruit cake was requested but he would have to ask Granny for one of hers.  So he decided he wanted a sponge cake instead.  Sponge cake whipped up the night before to be filled and iced on his birthday.  Only the cake was too thin and too solid so I resorted to my back up cake mix. One amazingly light delicious sponge later….and no-one wanted any until the next day (and it didn’t even all get eaten).  In future I won’t bother making one, he can have a shop bought one.

All in all, it was an extremely quiet birthday, not being fully well, although N did say he’d had a nice day.

Party narkiness

The week in the run up to his party wasn’t the best.  We’d gone from a potential day trip out with a few friends to a joint birthday party in a village hall to then the ‘can’t be bothered’ and ‘wouldn’t you just like to go out and make pizzas at Pizza Express’.  This had gone down well with both N and his friend, and we were all set.  But the week before N decided he wasn’t having a joint party.

‘We’re not friends anymore’

‘L isn’t 6 yet, it’s only my birthday because I’ve had mine and he hasn’t’

‘I’m not having his picture on my cake’

Argghhhh.  It was driving me mad.  And it was meant to be a nice quiet easy option.

In the end N missed his own party because he was sick early that morning over my bed.  I couldn’t believe it.  So it meant a quick ring round people I was meant to be taking into town, a pulling out of his friend who only knew N, and having to get the cake into town via my sister-in-law who was then taking N’s cousin to the party.

I don’t think N minded that much.  He certainly didn’t moan about wanting to be there, although he was gutted that he wouldn’t get to see the others and wouldn’t get a party bag (not that he was getting one anyway).  He didn’t want the others to eat his picture on the cake, so he was pleased when his half of the cake kindly got sent back to us.  I was sent a video of them singing happy birthday and they’d also sung to N as well which was sweet.

Party bags

It didn’t take long to decide what to do for our party bags.  We still had a few bags and boxes left from last year’s party so stickered up the white boxes with names and other party themed pictures.  After going to a party last year where the party favour was a Roald Dahl book, we decided that we’d rather hand out a small decent gift rather than plasticky tat, especially with only 6 children coming.  You can read about my ideas for party bags in a previous post, but this time we looked into small lego packs and various games. The only problem with Lego (apart from not being able to get it very cheaply even in the sales) was that we didn’t know the number of girls vs boys who would end up being there, and it was hard to find proper unisex sets in the cheaper option.

So the final decision was Uno card game. We love Uno and have about 4 packs around the house.  I also had a spare pack I’d bought for the present box (I always grab a pack or two when I spot them on sale), and the other mum did the online research to find some at a good price. Around £3 each later, 6 packs were ready for filling the party boxes.  Add to that cake, some coloured rubber poppers that I’d found in Tiger previously (I’m all for stocking the present box with little things I spot that are brilliant for this type of occasion), a glow bracelet (pack of 8 found in either Tiger or a pound shop), a balloon (requested by N) and a bit of cake.  I thought it was a really nice little party bag, and added to that a bargain pizza making party and it wasn’t a bad price for a celebration.  Even if N didn’t go and it still needed to be paid for.

From what I heard, all the children enjoyed it although the actually party hosting at Pizza Express wasn’t quite as they state.  More to come on that in another post soon.

Overall, despite me feeling that N’s 6th birthday probably passed by in a bit of a quiet nondescript way, he was happy…and his balloon is still just about afloat over a week later.

What kind of party has your child had recently?

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