Mum Diary: Throwing the perfect kids’ party

April is party season for my two boys. Not only are their two birthdays just three weeks apart, but many of our friends’ firstborns have their birthdays in April as we met through our antenatal classes three years ago. We’ve been to four parties in the last week alone.

In fact, my toddler Harry now expects his meals to be served on paper plates and include at least one sausage roll. This weekend was Baby Olly’s birthday and I can’t lie - it was an emotional day.

Giving him a birthday cuddle this morning I found it almost hard to believe that just a year had transformed him from that tiny red boiled frog to this large, wriggly and very determined child. It seems like barely weeks since Olly was born, but it also seems like he’s been part of our family for ever. Time plays strange tricks on you once you’ve had children.

I didn’t have long to sigh over my baby speeding his way towards toddlerdom, as we had a party planned for six toddlers and five babies, plus mothers.

We’d opted for a relatively simple party – in our home and garden with a few games and an egg hunt for the toddlers. It was good; we ate too much cake and chocolate, and far too many crisps then spent most of the afternoon playing with Harry’s ride-on diggers in the garden.

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For all that it was a simple party, it was knackering. Keeping adults fed, children entertained and stopping my toddler Harry from freaking out at all the kids playing with his toys turned out to be more exhausting than my wedding day. And this was a tiny, simple tea party – I take my hat off to the mums and dads I know who have recently thrown parties for dozens and dozens of kids.

After all, most of the parties we’ve been to just recently have been far more ornate than ours. In fact, they have been amazing. One last weekend had a magician. He was theoretically there to entertain the toddlers but there’s no way they appreciated it as much as me. The man made a dove appear out of nowhere – who needs Dynamo?

Another mum took 30-odd kids to a soft-play centre, which was absolute mayhem but absolutely brilliant fun.

For one particularly good party, the parents hired a church hall and put a bouncy castle in the middle of it. They’d planned loads of games, but the children just wanted to run around like loons and leap about on the bouncy castle.

This got me thinking. You can spend money on children’s parties and everyone will undeniably have fun. Magicians, bear-building workshops, soft play, snow play, sports play… You get the professionals involved and you’ll have a fabulous event, they know what they are doing.

But some of the best bits of these parties have been the bits that didn’t actually cost anything. At a pirate-themed party in December, the parents left a massive pile of boxes and cardboard in a corner and challenged the dads to build a pirate ship. The kids then had an enormous ship to play in - free, but epic.

At the bouncy castle party, the kids were simply left alone to run wild, eat cake and have fun. That’s more than enough for little children – they loved going crazy without too much adult interference.

In fact, the most important thing at every party wasn’t the money spent; it was the enthusiasm of the parents. Even at the soft-play party where everything was taken care of by the venue, the dad was racing around the climbing frames checking on kids while the mum made sure she had a chat with everyone.
 
You often read that parents are becoming hyper-competitive with their parties; hiring limos for their teenagers and booking pony petting zoos for their pre-schoolers. But I don’t think that’s actually true, I think that most people simply want to create memorable days for their children – as shown by their enthusiasm.

Anyway, we’re so exhausted after all these parties that we’ve decided not to throw one for Harry. To his incredible delight and anticipation, we’re spending the day at Digger Land. Taking two toddlers around a theme park with a two-hour drive at each end of the day somehow sounds like a breeze compared to wrangling 30 toddlers.

What about you? What are your best tips for children’s parties? Have your say and share your ideas in the comments below.