So both the birthdays are done. After all the planning and all the anticipation we landed up doing small separate parties for them both. Since their age gap is 5 years I just could not fit into stuff for both of them together. P dint want any theme or any decoration or any kind of structured activities for her party. And A ….. I dint have enough kids to do a structured activity 😬 I don’t know too many of her friends. Only 4 of her close friends from her school. And she has 2 cousins her age. So there were only 6 of them.

P called her friends over at home. There were around 12 of them including her cousins. We played a few 1 minute games which they enjoyed throughly! And also we played a truth and dare game. I pulled off the game from the internet which had age appropriate questions and dares. It was good fun! They played football for a while in the garden and then we took them to a nearby cafe for snacks. It was a whirlwind of 3 hours but it was super fun. The return gifts were math and word search books with a perfumes pen each.

The next weekend we took A’s friends to a play zone called Funky Monkey. It’s an all time favourite with the kids and you just can’t go wrong there. The food was pretty sad but as long as the kids had a good time. The returns for her birthday were valentine themed craft kits which the kids enjoyed thoroughly. My friend ,Palak Poddar , in Mumbai makes these. Here’s a link to their fb page.

These are some of the activities which were in the box. A’s friends sent me some pics!

As we always do….. we don’t take gifts for our birthdays. My girls get to buy what they like from us. But the guests contribute to an NGO I volunteer with. Cuddles Foundation. We provide nutritional support to underprivileged children suffering with cancer. To know more or contribute you can go here.

People say that you shouldn’t take away the joy from children of opening birthday presents. Well…. we can do that with the presents we give too. And now a days our kids get things so often. Grandparents keep gifting and we also keep buying the latest stuff for them. Do they really need these presents?

I would rather instil in them the quality of giving. They need to understand that there are people out there who do not even get 2 square meals a day. Forget the toys we buy. I try to get them to empathise with people who do not have the abundance we do. We don’t do too much but at least their birthdays are opportunities.

After seeing the amount of wastage that happens on birthdays, P herself has now started telling me that mom please ask people not to bring gifts. Please ask them to donate to Cuddles instead. She saw the number of things which came which she dint even want. Some she already had. So she understood. A is not old enough to understand yet so I will explain to her when the time comes. I started this tradition of donation when P turned 6 and A turned 1. So it’s been 4 years and going strong.

The parties were small this time but were an equal amount of fun. I have said this before…. it doesn’t matter to children how big or small the party is. As long as they have fun with their friends, they are happy. So think about what your child would be happy doing and with who. That’s the clue for your birthday celebration.