Top 10 Considerations for a Preschooler Party

Last month I hosted a no-frills party for my daughter’s 4th birthday. The party went smoothly enough, but I was surprised at my lack of foresight in some key areas. Here are my Top 10 nuggets of After-the-Fact Wisdom:

1. Get a noise ordinance permit.
For every party guest, the decibel level increases by a factor of two. One more kid and we would have been louder than a 70s Deep Purple concert. If you invite more than two children, consider earplugs.

2. Sometimes four-year-olds act like little kids.
When I came into the babies’ room and shouted, “Everybody get out of the crib. NOW!” my daughter responded, “We heard you tell us not to jump in the crib but we misunderstood.”

3. If you give five preschoolers raw eggs to hold, at least two will drop theirs within the first 10 seconds.
Let’s just say that messes were made during the baking of cupcakes.

4. You can’t make kids eat green beans.
All four guests politely turned down my green beans with a lovely, “No thank you.” My own daughter took a helping, possibly out of fear that I’d deny her a birthday cupcake if she didn’t eat her vegetables.

5. Make sure you feed everybody.
If there were one thing we would have done differently, it would have been to only invite one child. If there were two things we would have done differently, it would have been to feed the babies sooner. We thought they were screaming to be like the other party-goers. Turns out they were just really, really hungry.

6. Cupcakes are hard to frost.
One kid went through four cupcake tops. In the end, I frosted while the kids waited patiently for their turn with the sprinkles. They kept careful tabs on who was next in line for the shaker, cordially passing it around the table like little Stepford children.

7. Sometimes excited children pee all over the sofa.
Chiara, the kid who only needs to pee three times during daylight hours (balanced by seventeen times between the hours of 8pm and 10pm) had an accident of Hoover Dam proportions. While my husband gave her an impromptu bath, I cleaned up the mess, and the rest of the kids played “daycare” in which one lucky guest got locked in the closet until her “parents” came to get her.

8. Sometimes you can tell kids to put on their pajamas and they will do it.
They helped Chiara clean up her room, too. The kids were so helpful I almost had them help me clean out the pantry.

9. If you show a 24-minute cartoon, make sure it’s not the episode that is actually a 91-minute movie.
Three Backyardigans disks from Netflix and we open the director’s cut of “Robot Repairman.” Live and learn.

10. If you forget to bring out the party hats, for God’s sake don’t bring it up when you are kissing your child goodnight.
‘Nuff said.