Saturday, March 15th, 2008...5:41 pm
#6: Ridiculous 1st Birthday Parties
The Best Parent is fully aware of their precious child’s developmental milestones. Unfortunately, most of this well-researched knowledge evaporates like spilled soy milk upon the arrival of their child’s 1st birthday. Remember, the Best Parent’s first priority is status. And nothing says, “I have 10 Gucci purses and you don’t,” more than a ridiculous 1st birthday party.
The first item on the Best Parent’s list is hiring a designer who will come up with the best birthday invitations. First impressions are everything. They then have the difficult task of finding a printer who can churn out 1,000 of these invitations on environmentally friendly wax paper.
Next comes the entertainment. Everyone knows Best Parents love their children more than other parents. So, obviously it’s expected there will be at least two or more extremely exaggerated, over-the-top moon bouncers. The Best Parent is not concerned that their child, or any other child at the party for that matter, doesn’t walk yet. It’s appearances that count.
A professional face painter is also essential. The Best Parent doesn’t worry that the children would rather eat the paint than have some stranger wearing a scary clown outfit smear their little faces with it. The children will stop crying eventually.
And, aside from the gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-based birthday cake, 
the most important part of a ridiculous 1st birthday party is the travelling pony and petting zoo. Everyone knows pygmy goats just love to have their tails pulled by a horde or toothless urchins (also known as Best Parent’s kids). Perhaps it’s a throwback to ancient pagan rituals. Instead of honoring a birthday by slaughtering the hooved creature, we submit it to an extremely slow death by the poking and prodding of one-year olds.
If you are lucky enough to attend a Best Parent’s ridiculous 1st birthday party, be sure to bring an over-sized, expensive gift, or you likely will not be invited to the 2nd birthday party. And no one wants to miss a group of 2-year old’s playing paintball.
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12 Comments
March 15th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Love it!
March 29th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Hilarious! My sister did the big blow up play gym thingy for my nieces 3rd and pro face painter thing for my niece’s 4th. Granted the blow up play gym thingy was borrowed from her friend who does the petting zoo on her acreage for kids birthday. Ridiculous! When I have kids I’ll give them forts out of fridge boxes and let them eat glue.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I think lavish 1st birthday parties are stupid. Like a 1-year-old really cares about ponies and bounce houses.
1 for 6.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Ha!!! I had a big blow-out for my son’s 1st bday. Huge summer bday party in a canopy at the local parks system. 80 guests (no specialty cake though – just a regular Elmo cake from the grocery store). (But then again, I am not white. But hubby is – does that count?!). We we had his 2nd at an animal learning center place for kids…..so yeah, animals.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:25 am
Grammar: Learn it.
“Since” and “because” aren’t interchangeable.
Don’t pluralize with an “‘s.”
June 28th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
BScmidt, which post are you referring to? I’ve searched the entire blog entry…neither word appears in it. Ever. So how can words that do not appear in said entry even be confused for interchangeable?
Concerning the pluralization of a word with a “‘s”…this error appears merely ONCE… and is the most often made error in the English Language.
I’m not a big believer that ones grammar should be critiqued in a “blog” anyway… it’s more about the content.
I’ll have to post more about my opinion on the content after I attend my neices first birthday bash next week 😀 My sister has already informed me that there will, indeed, be inflatables. (Perhaps a slip n’ slide or two as well?)
July 14th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Why make fun of gluten-free? For kids with celiac disease that is the only option.
July 21st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
What’s even funnier than a lot of the entries in this blog is how uptight some of the readers get posting comments in response to the entries.
It’s SATIRE. Lighten up.
I was going to share this link with my “yahoo group” but then I realized my “yahoo group” is littered with BPEs and they would have thrown me out, so I just shared the link with my sarcastic white worst parent ever friends . lol
September 13th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
What I really love are the Enforced Birthday Death March parties. You know the ones. They take place at My Kids Gymboree U or whatever indoor playground place. The kids get just enough free time on the equipment to get them over their shyness. Then when they are really into it, it’s time for them to stop, sit in a circle, and sing songs. No wiggling, talking or spontaneous fun now – you must follow the perky college student! Then the parachute comes out. Then some other game, but no winners, or someone’s feelings might get hurt. Then the cake, and just enough free time to make it impossible to get them to leave.
I must have taken my sons to 20 of these parties. They were all so much the same, that I had to reread the invite to find out who’s birthday it was this time. And most of the time, there were so many kids that half of them never even spoke to the birthday kid. Blech. Give me pin the tail on the donkey any day.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
LOL. Your blog is great! I’m going through all your entries, and this one is my favorite so far–keep up the good work!
February 26th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
So true, so true. And I am guilty of this myself. My excuse is that I was 9 months pregnant with my 2nd at my first’s first birthday (bet BSchmidt will love that grammatical nightmare), so we did Gymboree to make it easy on US. We knew the kids could care less. Will never do that again. The sing-songy voice of that woman is worse than giving birth without an epidural!!
June 8th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
For my son’s 1st we had it at a winery because it was for US.