Having just celebrated the greatest birthday of all time, as well as my own 35th, last weekend, and being fully entrenched in the season of parenthood where you spend at least 1/4 of each month shopping for and shuttling your kids to birthday parties, the subject has been top of mind for me as of late.
Over the course of the past 15 months, we have either attended or hosted birthday soirees at:
Build a Bear Workshop, two different inflatable places, the local fire station, a Tae Kwon Do dojo, an indoor soccer club, a pony farm and a Victorian house that had been renovated to include a fashion runway and tea party salon. For our eldest daughter's fifth birthday this past August, my husband and I, in a moment of weakness, rented a 15' inflatable water slide to make her dream of a backyard "hula princess party" a reality.
Having entered the world on the very inconvenient day of December 24th, all of my childhood parties consisted of chili, cake and ice cream with my family, who actually did an amazing job of making my birthday a special event considering the time of year they were up against. I vaguely remember having one "friend" party in elementary school, but even that was hosted in my parents' living room. And there were definitely no inflatables.
But the landscape is different these days, and the manner in which kids mark the passing of another year is quite symbolic of the very manner in which they are growing up. Despite an alleged economic recession, parents, myself included, are more than willing to pony up cash to make their kids special day as special - and, perhaps just as importantly, low-maintenance - as possible.
The reason many parents can afford lavish birthday parties is because they're pulling in two incomes. Bringing home twice the bacon means they have at least half the time to devote to cleaning the house, fixing the snacks and baking the cake that were requisite to birthday parties of yesteryear.
More cash + less time = Full-service party venue, where forking over a few hundred dollars buys you everything from soup to nuts. Or, in the case of preschool parties, invites to party favors.
Until Wednesday, I thought I'd seen it all in the course of our party circuit, but then a friend of mine mentioned that she'd taken her five-year old to a "yoga themed" birthday party at Shine on Market. Trying to envision what might go on at a yoga party for preschoolers, I asked her if the tots shouldered their mats and headed to Starbucks for lattes post-downward dog.
According to my pal, the kids did, indeed, engage in the ancient practice, as well as some craft- and merry-making in honor of the occasion. And there were lattes involved, though I doubt the kids were consuming.
Part of me wishes I was a small-business owner who could claim my own piece of the kids' birthday party pie, and the other part hopes our next party invitation will be to a mother-daughter spa retreat. A girl can dream, can't she?
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