I am a big fan of birthdays, and having some kind of celebration makes it special. From small and cozy to an all-out extravaganza, there are many ways to honor the birthday kid. Kidoinfo has a great list of resources and ideas on how to have a party. Decide what works for your family and don’t stress over what you think you should do. I wrote about choosing a birthday theme in the past and today Katy Killilea writes about having a birthday party at home (one of our family favorites).

What happened to having a birthday party? My first grader’s classmates have been taking turns hosting parties at Big Fun, big-box venues: Radical Rick’s, Monster Mini-golf, Fantasyland. It seems we go to one of these parties a few times each month. Hey, I have no quibble with the fun the kids have and do not mean to criticize parents who choose these venues for parties. I am, of course, grateful for the many afternoons of entertainment my son has enjoyed. (And please don’t stop inviting him. It’s not his fault his mother is like this.)

But. When it came time for us to have a birthday party this spring, we planned our usual little shindig. Doing so felt almost aggressively retrograde. And I worried that our back yard party would flop. That the kids would be bored without the delights to which they had become accustomed: glow-in-the-dark monsters, an animatronic bear strumming a guitar every twenty minutes, or laser tag. An additional worry: would we just seem cheap? (I do not know the cost per child for one of the Big Fun parties, but I’m pretty sure it is more than the cost per child for cake, pizza, pineapple, and grape juice/milk, and a bag of fifteen multicolored balloons.)

I do not know how to decorate a cake to look like a Barbie princess, nor do I have clever party ideas to share (our not-so-clever yard party games are described below). Instead, I want to report that our very simple party was fun. We played games, the kids played on the swing set, ate pizza on the patio, zipped over a pit of poisonous snakes (or were they dead leaves and random sticks?) on a trolley strung between two trees. It differed from a regular playdate only in that there were more kids, and there was a handful of adult-directed games, ahem, “events.” Oh, and there were cupcakes, and the singing of the song that no birthday party can be without.

The kids we know, I am happy and relieved to report, are not yet so jaded that they can’t just play outside and enjoy one another’s goofy company. Start with a birthday boy or girl and add some friends, a watermelon, a pizzeria that delivers, and cake, what you get is a pretty great birthday party.

Yard games we used:

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I had my first opportunity to pet a six-foot alligator and an albino python. Although touching snakes may not be my favorite thing to do, it was definitely fascinating for my kids and their friends during a recent trip to Regal Reptiles.

There are more snakes, lizards, turtles, and spiders than I have ever seen under one roof. This warehouse space, near the Providence Public Safety Complex, has ponds and aquariums filled with all kinds of amphibians and invertebrates from around the globe, including a 6,000-gallon alligator and caiman pond. Learn fun facts and watch the alligators feed during special weekend shows.

If you have a birthday party there, the birthday kid even gets to sit on an alligator!

Regal Reptiles Adventure Center: 425 Washington Street, Providence, RI. 401-277-9000.
Open Daily: 11 am until 7 pm
Admission Prices: $7 for adults and $5 for kids (3-12). Children under 3 are free.
$6 for seniors (55 and older). Click here for $1 discount coupon.

birthday: [noun]
1. an anniversary of the day on which a person was born (or the celebration of it).

From a small, cozy celebration to an all-out party extravaganza, there are many ways to make this day special for the birthday kid. If you want a theme, choose something that’s special to your child - a toy, sport, movie, music, etc. Use it just for the cake or to shape the entire party.

In our house, birthday celebrations are centered around a theme (it’s the designer in me - can’t help it), whether we have a large party or a small family celebration. We picked the kids’ themes for the first three years of their life (1st - Fish, 2nd - Monkeys, 3rd - Jungle Animals). But when it came time to plan the 4th, my son D said he had it all figured out. Because he and his brother love to put on shows, it became a costume party complete with show curtains. For their 5th Birthday, the boys still loved costumes, but expanded the theme to their current obsession - Come as your Favorite Superhero.

Before having kids, I used to sell my metal home accessories at trade shows. Lucky for us (and a little crazy), we could produce a stage in our dining room just by carrying up my old trade show booth walls from the basement. Unless you have an old trade show booth laying around your house, hanging up some curtains temporarily in a doorway to create a stage area will work fine.

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Looking for a playground in Providence? Want to have a picnic in Bristol? Check out the new Kidoinfo Parks + Playgrounds guide. Where is the closest toy store? How about a list of preschools? Our Resource section is brimming with information about Shopping, Education and Childcare and many more resources to follow. Kidoinfo makes it easy to find what you need. Tell your friends. Visit often.