Your child’s first birthday is a momentous one. What do you do to celebrate their very first birthday? Questions like these often come up with parents of almost one year olds. The answer to this question is something only your family can answer, but where do you start?

Why should I have a party when my son/daughter won’t remember it?
A one year birthday party is not only for your child, but also a celebration of you as parents. Making it through that first year of life is a wonderful occasion, and one that should be celebrated. This should be a party that is a combination of a celebration of the end of babyhood, the beginning of toddler-hood, and the end to your first year as a parents! Sound like a hard task? It doesn’t have to be.

When should I have the party?
This year in particular will be the hardest in terms of timing a party for your child. They are often on a 1 or 2 nap schedule, which leaves little time for the party. There are two great options for this. One is to have a party with a brunch. The other is a late afternoon get together.

If your child only has an afternoon nap, often the time they are the most cheerful is in the morning hours. Use this to your advantage. Your party planning should be focused on morning activities. Have a brunch, instead of lunch, or have an early morning at the park for your friends.

If you child still takes two naps, it might be best to have a party planned for about an hour after they typically wake up from their second nap. This gives your child a chance to get up and adjusted before so many people come over. The time you choose for your party is one main element that will determine whether your child has a good time or not. You wouldn’t like it if they had a party for you at 5:30 in the morning if you weren’t a morning person. Keep this in mind! Timing is everything!

Should we have a theme?
This is entirely up to you. When we had our daughters’ first birthdays, we had a theme to each. Our first was an Elmo theme, because she just could not get enough of that little guy. The other was Big Bird because she enjoyed yellow and Sesame Street. Finding a theme can be as easy as looking at what your child likes. If they have a favorite character, this makes your job easy. You can make this your theme, or just take a color from the character and use that for napkins, and decorations. If there is a favorite book they like take that theme, and use it. I have used books as centerpieces before, and it made for cute decorations.

If your child does not have a favorite, you might want to go with their room theme, animal or color. The theme could be as simple as making the cake, napkins, and plates match. You do not have to go all out for decorations. This money can be used in other areas. One or two balloons is really all you need to make it look like a party.

Who should we invite?
The invitation list for a party like this can get large quickly! What you need to do is think of who the baby knows. This is their party. Will all of the people you know make them afraid and not have a good time? If your child tends to get upset and scared during large gatherings then you should limit your guest list to people with whom they are the most comfortable. Even inviting just a few Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles can be a large party. If your child likes bustling activity, then you can expand your guest list.

Playgroups can often make for a large guest list, after adding in parents and children. If your child has a playgroup of children around their age you can do one of two things. You can either invite them to the main party, or if you are trying to limit their actual birthday party, why not suggest that you do a birthday for all of the playgroup at one time? If the children in the playgroup are just a few months apart, plan on a time that is after all have had their birthday. Just throw a small party during a play date with cupcakes and maybe a few games. This will help cut down on your birthday party, and can still be a way the children can celebrate together.

What food should we serve at the party?
I always recommend a buffet style party. Make sure to include foods that your child likes. If their favorite thing to eat is goldfish, then they should be on the menu! For the adults, have foods out that you can pick up at your local grocery store. Why make this special time one that is going to make your head spin? If you can pick up chicken strips, salad, cole slaw, fruit salad and chips, then why not make it that easy on yourself? This way you will have more time to focus on your child and their day. If you are determined to make the food, make sure it is easy to do, and something that you will have time to make before guests arrive.

What should we do to make the party special?
There are so many unique things you can do to make your child’s day special. Just taking pictures and video makes it special. My two favorite ideas for a first birthday party are a picture album and time capsules.

Taking pictures with your guests is a great idea. Once guests have arrived, and the child has gotten used to them being there, try getting a photo of the child with that person or family. Do not take the picture as soon as the guest arrives, as your child is sure to resist this idea. You will only get a bunch of pictures of a crying, newly one year old! After you take their picture, give the guests a piece of paper that they can write a message to the child. You can then take these pictures and messages, and make a great book to give your child when they are older. It will be a nice way for them to remember the special people who were in their lives at this time of their life.

Time capsules are also a great idea. All you will need is a box or container to keep these things in for a long period of time. Ask each guest to bring something for the time capsule. You can do this in lieu of gifts if you would like. You may also add things like the newspaper, or a special book. Then put all of these things in the box and have the child open it at a later date such as their sixteenth birthday, or high school graduation.

Now that you have a few ideas about your party, it is time to start planning! Above all else, remember that no matter what you end up doing, this day will be a special one for you and your child. Happy Birthday!

I remember how devastated I was the first time my daughter smacked me. I felt mad and ashamed all at the same time. How did this precious baby turn into a monster overnight? One day she was sweet and cuddly. The next she used hitting to tell me she didn’t like what was going on! I felt like I had somehow failed as a parent. Why does she do this? We don’t hit!

The hitting started out of the blue one day, and no matter what methods we tried to use to stop her, she kept it up. I dreaded going to playgroups, or being at a group function where my little baby’s left hook could potentially be the talk of the week. I knew this was something that some children just did, but I didn’t want to be the Mom of “the kid who hits.”

After scouring parenting books, the Internet and talking to other parents to gather what we felt was all the research that was out there we came to a dead end. We were ready to quit and just accept that either 1- this was a phase that would hopefully go away soon or 2-we would have a hitting child on our hands for a long time.

Finally just the thing we had been waiting for; another parent who had this same problem and solved it much differently that we had been doing. We had been working on changing our child’s behavior by telling her it was a bad thing to do, and showing her with our grimaces and looks of discontent that hitting hurts. These weren’t working, and we were ready to try anything.

This takes two adults or at least an older child to work. When your child hits someone, your natural reaction is to go straight to the child and let them know just how bad that it was. This is where things go wrong. The child doesn’t understand exactly what you are saying, and so continues what s/he is doing.

Here is how this new method works.  In our example we will use Mommy (the victim), and Daddy, or another adult (the comforter). When your child hits someone your first reaction instead of running to the child should be to immediately rush over to Mommy and see if she is okay. When you do this make sure that the person who is the “comforter” really makes a big deal, no matter how small the hit was, and asks “Are you okay Mommy? Oh Mommy is hurt. Poor Mommy. Are you okay?” Make sure that you do not pose these questions to the child. Just say them as if you are just asking. This is somewhat hard to do because we are not all born actors. I actually had a hard time not laughing at my husband saying this to me, knowing that I was just fine. To help me he buried my face in his chest so that our daughter could not see that Mommy was in fact, really just getting a kick out of all of this charade. At no point during this process do you draw attention to the child. The point is to put all of the focus on “helping” the victim.

We only had to use this method about 4-6 times for our daughter to understand that if you hit someone else it really does hurt the other person. If it doesn’t work right at first don’t panic. If you are like we were, you are willing to do whatever it takes to make this behavior stop. Hitting is one of those things that lots of children go through, but it is no less painful, physically and psychologically to each parent who has to experience it. Working with them in this way will help them learn that hitting hurts and change their behavior.

I have had may people ask me this question. There are so many car seats out there, each one claiming a different thing, and pretty soon, your head is spinning with too much information. I will try and break down the process for you.

Here are a few terms to know before searching for the seat. For infants there are two types of car seats: the infant-only seat, and the convertible seat. Infant-only seats can only be used up to 20-30 lbs and will be rear facing car seats. Convertible seats have a higher weight rating, and start out as rear-facing, but then can be turned around when the child is over 1 year and weighs over 20 lbs.

Within the convertible car seat arena there are three types of belts; 5 point harness, overhead shield and the t-shield. The 5 point harness covers the shoulders, hips and between the legs. The overhead shield model are the ones that have a bar like device that comes down over the head to buckle your child in, and the T-shield is a triangle style shield that attaches to the shoulder straps.

Safety, safety, safety. No one wants their little one in an unsafe car seat. For goodness sake, we just spent 9 months making sure we were eating the right foods, not drinking that margarita we really wanted, or taking that cold medicine, and god for bid, we sleep on our back after the first few months. So, naturally, you aren’t going to throw caution to the wind and buy the first car seat that you find. If it were that easy, where would be fun be?

Now, we will get to the good stuff. Here is what I would recommend. I always liked the convertible best for an infant. It is nice to know that this car seat will be with you for a while, and it is money well spent. The infant-only seats are outgrown so quickly, that to me it hardly seems worth the money. Especially with your first born, there are other benefits; having to take them out of the car seat, as you would with a convertible. For one, they won’t have a flat head! Just kidding. I have seen more than a few third and fourth children with flat heads in the back because they rarely got out of the car seat, but I digress. Seriously- with an infant-only seat, you can take them with you without disturbing their sleep. This is a nice feature, and one of the main points for getting an infant-only as far as I’m concerned. With a convertible car seat, you do have to take them out each time you get to your destination, which is somewhat of a pain. With our family though, it worked best for us to get a Britax Roundabout . We were able to use it for almost 3 years and used it for a second time when our youngest was born. It was great for wear and tear, and we enjoyed that it also had non-standard colors to choose from.

Within the convertible car seat space, my personal preference is the 5 point harness. I think that it provides a great safety feature by covering all of the known strong points on the body. I would steer away from the overhead shield style. This was always a problem for my children. We did have one that we used on occasion, but when they were old enough (and believe me this age was a lot younger than I thought it would be) a game of peek-a-boo would ensue. Not that I don’t like peek-a-boo, there are merits to that game, but not at the expense of using the harness that is supposed to be helping keep you safe in the car. They would move it up and down incessantly once they figured out how to. It became a game Mommy couldn’t take. Trying to explain to a 8 month old the value of keeping this object in its proper place was always fun.

Another feature that we didn’t think about when we first bought our car seat, but just lucked into, was the approved by the airlines feature. If you travel as often as we do, you will want to make sure that when buying a car seat it is FAA approved. Airlines recommend using a car seat until the child is 4 years of age to prevent injury during take-off and landing, or if there is any turbulence while you are flying. I also found that using a car seat while on an airplane was helpful because our children were used to falling asleep in their car seat in the car, so it wasn’t as difficult a transition for them to fall asleep while flying. And believe me, there is no better feeling than knowing that your child is asleep on the plane, and you don’t have to use your arms to support them for another 2 hours. Not only will you be happy they are sleeping one the plane, but so will the people around you! Whew!!

Now that you know what to look for when buying a car seat, all you have to decide on is color! Keep in mind what will work for your whole family and routine. Good luck!

When we were expecting our first, my husband was hoping to find a way to bond with the baby. He talked to her, but that was just occasionally, and there really isn’t much to say to someone who doesn’t respond! So, we implemented ‘Daddy Reading Time’. This was a time each day where he would read a book to our daughter even before she was born. I had been reading to her each day, but having him read to her gave him a purpose, and something to do, while we were eagerly anticipating our daughter’s arrival. We found a book that we enjoyed, and each night we set aside 5 minutes to read to our baby. At first it felt strange to listen to my husband read “Goodnight Moon” to who essentially felt like me, but then we knew there was a greater good, and we both got over it.

When we packed my bag for the hospital, this book was one of the things that definitely went with us . We made sure that as soon as my husband could, he read her that same story again, so she could associate his voice with a face. It was amazing to see her gaze at him when he started reading. It was as if she was saying to him “I love you, and you are my Daddy.”

What we didn’t know is that this Daddy Reading Time, was doing several things to benefit both our daughter and Daddy. It helped him bond, and has given her a love of reading. What my husband found was that when she was little, it didn’t matter what he was reading to her, as long as he was reading. In fact, once he was reading a book on how to change the oil in his car, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He would say “automotive maintenance” and she would smile. Imagine us saying this at The Picture People to get her to smile for the camera. I’m sure they have heard a lot of crazy things in their time, but I’m guessing we take the cake for saying “automotive maintenance” over and over, and each time getting a smile. Who would have thought?

To this day, we still have Daddy Reading Time. My girls enjoy this special time with Daddy each day. It is these bonds that will last a lifetime!