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We did pizza and cupcakes at the park for my son’s 2nd birthday with a 3pm start time. He naps from 12-2 so this worked.
Maybe you can try to push his nap a bit earlier on his party day. Or just accept that on special occasions, sometimes the schedule will be disrupted and naps are cut short, shifted, on the go, or forgone altogether. Same thing happens at holidays, your baby will adjust back the next day. Have fun!
Don’t worry about napping as much on a one off! Cat nap on the way to the park and way home
Parties for little ones at this age seem to start at 10/11am or at 3/4pm for this reason.
I did a 4 pm party for my son’s first birthday. At home. He was fresh after his nap. Stayed awake and energetic for his entire party. He enjoyed the attention and had a great time. I curated the menu based on his favorites - fruit platter, guacamole, pesto pasta (he was obsessed with it at the time), etc. He loved it, friends and families enjoyed it too. It was a fair bit of work but he had a great party and my husband and I have wonderful memories and pictures.
You could do a party at 10 in the park and serve some breakfast food and have pizza delivered at 12. I’ve been to many parties that follow this timing.
We did our son’s 1st bday at a “my gym” or “little gym” type place. It was great because they provided the cake, cupcakes, and pizza as part of the package. All we did was provide goodie bags and a banner. He started walking a few weeks beforehand so he had fun toddling around with a soft surface underneath him for when he stumbled.
Work with your baby’s schedule? I’m not sure we were on a real schedule at the time, but he always napped in strollers/car seats, so he napped on the way to the party and was up by the time the party started. I’m sure he fell asleep again once we put him in the car seat on the way home.
We just did my son’s at 2pm on a Sunday in our apartment. I planned it so he was just waking up as people were arriving.. and that it wasn’t super late on a Sunday. We had like 12 people and it was really nice but a lot of work for me and husband
I’d recommend doing a 4pm party at a park ! Have pizza and cake around 5 :). Conversely you could just do 10:30 to 12:30 and do pizza at noon. Agreed with other commenters that you should just do what works for you because 1 is so young they won’t really know what’s even going on lol ….. I do however disagree with skipping the nap. Totally fine if it’s off schedule or irregular but also depends on your child - for us if we had missed an afternoon nap at that age it would not have been a pleasant party
Agree missing a nap would have been a nightmare for us at that age
Most kids birthday parties I’ve been to under age 4 are either at 10am or 4pm. Super normal. Pick which one works for you.
Rising Star
You may get more feedback in a parent bowl but:
We didn’t do a birthday. Seemed like a waste of energy for me when I was already stretched too thin and he didn’t even know what a birthday was or would ever remember. I made a cake and did an at home cake smash with just us for the photos and memories and he just cried, wanted to eat a balloon, and had a massive angry tantrum and overturned the cake when we took the balloon away for his safety. It was the best confirmation that I made the right choice not to do more.
He’s 3 now and this was the first birthday we did something, because he knows what they are from school and is obsessed with birthday hats and cupcakes lol. So we had pizza lunch at school and cupcakes and hats etc.
Oh expectations are very low; it’s mostly for family — we have a big but geographically spread out family that wants to celebrate, and we’ll likely include some of our very close friends and his godparents too. Our baby likes people and the park, but I’m not expecting him to enjoy it more than a random weekend.
We do 10am and have pizza available around 11/11:30 (most schools and daycares my kids have been to eat around this time).
Or if we do 3pm, we do cake early around 4pm so it doesn’t throw off bed time too bad.
Just let em nap, no biggie
All of the first birthday parties we went to were either 10-12 or 4-7 lol. That accommodated most 1 year olds schedules