Writings by me

Soon after Christmas is done, the countdown to Freddie’s birthday begins. It’s a long old countdown; Freddie’s birthday is in April.

This year, he is 7, and one of the unlucky lockdown little ones who have missed two years of parties. So I thought I’d make up for it this year and let him choose between a big old party, inviting the whole class or a choice of 7 guests and hold a smaller one at home (hoping for the latter – I’ve always been slightly resentful (read: grumpy) about inviting a whole class of people because you have to!)

Much to my delight, Freddie chose the smaller option under the condition that it would be a Lego party. It’s grown from there; there’s going to be Legomasters-style building, a Lego cake, Lego candles (I know! You can find them here: Block Party Building Block Pick Candles – 5.5cm – Pack of 5 – Party Packs), minifigure party bags and seen as it’s Easter Saturday and I love overcommitting myself, I’m even going to throw in an Easter egg hunt.

So as the time has passed, and with it 4 months of planning chats; (we both it would seem, love to plan parties) the party has grown bigger in size.

One morning on the playground, chatting to a school mum of a kid not on the invite list, she begins talking about what her son has instructed her to buy Freddie for his birthday. As it turns out, Freddie has now invited the whole class and some other stragglers. Cue me having to explain to said mum, that her son has not made the cut.

Chatting it through with Fred, he explained that yes this was true; he has designed invites at school and given them out. And we are just over two weeks to go. I slightly hysterically explained that this was not going to be possible. To which, in the eyes of a nearly-seven year old where the solution of ‘uninviting’ is simple, he casually suggested this wouldn’t be a problem. To which, and growing slightly more hysterical by the second, I advised the ‘say nothing and hope everyone forgets’ approach.

So now we have the quandary; do I own up to the WhatsApp chat that due to space issues, the paper invites are in fact ‘unofficial’ invites or do I do the old favourite of ‘do nothing, say nothing and hope for the best?’

And then I start to see how just inviting the whole class and accepting this expensive yet inclusive practice, might be why so many of us do it that way. Next year I will not begin planning until the month before to avoid this very situation.

Wish me luck.