Sarah218

Riley turns 3 next month. She wants a princess party. Very adamant about that. So we have never invited her friends before. We have always had kids but they were always kids of our family or friends. She wants to invite 3 little friends from her school. I know one mom because of playdates but only the others through school.

How did you handle inviting toddler age friends? Did you do a separate party for little friends or invite them to the bigger family party? We have a huge family that lives locally so her b-days have about 22 people at them.

I really need to decide and send out invitations, we are already past the date I wanted to send them out. Thanks in advance.

KATin NJ

Sarah,
ALWAYS a dilemna here, too. We have resulted in 2 parties...one for a small group of Will/Nolan's friends and then, the family comes for dinner the night OF the birthday. Last year, I was able combine it, but I needed to stop inviting OUR friends to accomodate the kids' friends. Kind of a bummer, but very few of our friends invite us to their kid's parties unless the kids are buddies.

Hay lady

I do one party. I don't have it in me to do 2

Jack's 3rd birthday is right before Rileys (Dec 1st)! Doesn't time fly? I have decided to do a party together. He is begging me for a bounce house. I am going to rent one. I feel bad because every party we go to that has one is usually full of big kids and he gets bonked too much and doesn't enjoy it. This one will be for little kids only!

I am going to have his party the weekend of Thanksgiving because we will have some family from LA in town. I am excited! We are doing a cupcake theme. I think I am going to let the little ones decorate their own. Hopefully the weather will be nice!

KiwiMama

We have only done family parties - no friends so far. My brother (who has teenage kids now) always did family birthdays until they were in elementry school. Then it was 1 friend for 1st grade, 2 friends for 2nd grade & so on. I'm thinking about doing the same thing.

BigNutbrownHare

We haven't really reached the point where Asher has his own friends, so our parties for him have been family (we have a fairly small family) and our adult friends who happen to have children (of any age). It has worked out fairly well so far, but I know that as he gets his own friends it will probably drift towards having a party with just his friends and we will invite the grandparents to that.

Carol in Maryland

We did two, but we didn't have much family. We had a family at home dinner, with the presents, usually on the actual birthday. On the weekend before or after, we had the "as many friends as you are old" outing to someplace special (e.g. DS took 6 friends to climb on the tanks at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and then out to McDonald's for lunch)

quigs

This year will be Sassy's first friend party I think. There are 3 other girls about the same age in what I like to call the "Sassy Girls Club" at church so we may just ask them. We're still picking a theme but I'm pretty sure we will decorate cookies.

poppygal

we have always just done a family party. I thought about doing a friend one too this year, but she is just now starting to talk about friends at school, so we kind of ran out of time (her bday is tomorrow)
I think we will start friend parties next year, and yes they will be seperate from the family party.