A surprisingly successful soft play party

Middle son turned four last weekend and, to celebrate, we had our first go at a soft play party. A January birthday means that parties at home have to be mostly inside and it often gets a little mad - we hired soft play equipment for his first birthday that was far too big for our sitting room and it was chaos! This year he was adamant that he didn't want a party at home and he wanted to invite his nursery friends for the first time. I must admit I was less than keen on handing over my money and signing up to the list of terms and conditions but it went surprisingly well.

We tried out a couple of soft play places that host parties back in November to see what they were like and settled on the local leisure centre (even though it is strangely tucked away in the corner of the shopping centre). I'm really glad we went for somewhere that gave us the place to ourselves. Even though not all the children knew each other beforehand (we had nursery friends, family friends and cousins), they all knew they had a link through T and very quickly started playing together. One of T's friends comes with two brothers the same age as my other two boys which worked really well as it gave W someone to play with too.

The party lunch room was pretty spartan - our one tablecloth barely covered one of the three tables they had set out and I hadn't realised we should have taken some plates but I think these are details that T won't have noticed. And not having the party at home gave me the chance to talk to the other parents rather than run around like a madman making sure everyone is ok. I know school and nursery parties can be a bit of a chore but we haven't had too many invites so far so I still like the opportunity to meet other parents as there's not much time at drop off and pick up most days. We are always early for T's nursery as we go straight from the school run so we often miss people who are running a bit later! My husband managed to spend most of the party following our youngest around in the play frame and avoid having to talk to people so he was quite happy as well!

So overall it was a success. We deliberately kept it low key (I wrote myself a note to that effect when I started planning back in November as I tend to get carried away!) and T seemed to have a good day. It was a bit of a learning curve for W with T getting all the presents but he coped, and he's already talking about what he might get for his birthday in June in comparison!