Skip to main content

Birthdays in Gotham Are Recession Proof

Why are kid's birthday parties so damn expensive in New York? Every way I slice it, it comes up beaucoup bucks.

Is this because I live in a concrete box where I have to bring the entertainment INSIDE (no jungle gym to let them run around on for moi!) and also a winter birthday rabbit (hence no scavenger hunt in the neighborhood, lest the 92-year woman across the hall beats them with her walker...)?

Sigh. Don't get me wrong. I'm a birthday party queen. Love them. Love them madly. Don't love having to explain the costs to The Prince when all I really dream of is a party for The Rabbit with a pinata tied to a tree in a backyard filled with streamers, balloons, some room for a three-legged race, and those Baskin Robbins ice cream clowns instead of cake.

No matter. Clever mama will come up with a clever solution I am sure. And The Rabbit is bound to love her party no matter what we craft.

That's the beauty of The Rabbit: She's disappointment-proof.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What's a pinata? I want one.
How old is your Rabbit? Disappointment-proof! Give it time.
Manhattan Mama said…
She's a lovely 5, turning 6, er perhaps 16.
A pinata? The most wonderful thing -- a paper mache hollow creation that you fill with sweets and treats and then bash open with a bat. A lovely diversion for children and frustrated mamas -- depending on the treats of course!
Kate B. said…
I love pinatas, too. but even they are expensive in London! The only solution is to ban class birthdays and invite a handful of friends home for a traditional tea party instead. It ticks all the boxes - exclusivity, delightfully retro and probably saves the planet too (anti-consumerist etc). Announce it's the latest thing in suitably strident tones and all the (s)mothers will be vying with each other over their home baked (vegan, no doubt) scone recipes in no time.

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the