Getting down with da kids

Monkeyrina was three last week. Bex kindly wished me a happy third labour day and indeed it seems that, as with the actual birth, children's birthdays cost mothers all the stress and expense, with only the reward of a happy little girl with a chocolatey mouth. And that, it cannot be denied, is a fine reward.

As our house is the size of most people's garden sheds, we hired the local community centre for a nominal amount and took all our junk over there for the party. When I was three, parties were regimental affairs, with party games at set times whose winners tended to be the kids who my mother felt deserved it the most. These days, kids' parties are at playbarns, where they can climb and swing and slide and scream until the food is served and they continue to climb and swing and slide and scream at the table. Monkeyrina's party was a cross between the two - we had a small bouncy castle (which took an hour to inflate with a lilo pump) and Mr B threw caution to the wind by upgrading to Spotify Premium so that we could play nursery rhymes offline from his laptop (anyone remember CDs?). I filled paper plates with junk food that was eagerly devoured by children and parents alike (even those who claimed to spurn cocktail sausages) and the remains of which now sit temptingly in the kitchen as yet another reason to boot me off to the gym. Anna, my ever-generous sort-of-step-mother-in-law, who told me she sometimes reads this blog (hello!), created her usual artistic triumph of a birthday cake, along with a full set of spectacular cupcakes, and in the end I didn't need all five of the bottles of cider I'd bought to self-medicate with afterwards.

I didn't know much about children before Monkeyrina came along. I still don't know much about children but I do know that people make allowances for your behaviour. Here are some snapshots of things I'd love to do but, for mysterious and disappointing social reasons, could never get away with at 35.

• Monkeyrina running round and round the long kids' table before the guests arrived, giggling uncontrollably.
• Kids jumping and twisting to catch glimmering bubbles.
• One little boy refusing to sit at the table to eat with the others, because, his mother said, he was afraid of the adults.
• One girl refusing to leave the food table until every cake had been eaten. Um, that was, in fact, my daughter. Family resemblance, anyone?
• Continously turning around and shaking random limbs all about and then wandering off to play with balloons during the Hokey Cokey.
• All the kids locating the duck whistles in their party bags and gravely honking away when their parents tried to take them home.
• Pretending to be tired at the end of the party just to get a hug.

Grown up parties are fine - sometimes you want to get a little tipsy on alcopops and argue about government policy with someone you don't know quite well enough to say what you really think - but children's parties are so much freer. Kids really can shake it all about and the photos on Facebook the next day will be captioned "Aaah!" rather than "Aaargh!"

Children learn from us and we learn from them. I hope that, as well as contributing to their educational development and nagging them into submission, they learn that sometimes - given the right circumstances - it's OK to do you really want to do.