May 23, 20204 min read

Pandemic + Parenting | Birthdays

Updated: Jun 5, 2020

Making the most of our pandemic birthday's. Easy ideas to celebrate birthday during lockdown.

Activities to make the pandemic birthday feel special, memorable and fun.

We were so excited to celebrate Bubu's 3rd birthday. At three it feel's like lo's are big enough to know 'what birthdays are'. I guess I was more excited, to see Bubu' s face when we celebrate/surprise him. It was also going to be our first celebration with our friends. Last two birthdays we deliberately celebrated in India with all grandparents.

However, the unforeseen pandemic did put a damper to our plans.

I did not want to settle for simple, so I started planning activities to make the birthday feel special, memorable and fun; keeping in mind the current lockdown.

It turned out as I wished for - super exciting. All I did was a bunch of DIY activities; all of them were very easy to set up, not time consuming and lot of fun when we did them.

#1 DIY Photoshoot

This one is simple. Just dress up and head out to a natural green setup, anything around your home. In nature there is a 100% guarantee the pics will look fresh, lively. Light plays a important roll too. The golden hour lighting is 1 hour after sunrise and 1 hour before sunset. That's when the sun is mellow, the shadows are soft, complementing face features and the sky will have the most beautiful colors.

With a child/children it may be difficult to dress and be out at those time. Our experience was not as rosy as the photos look. It took me 1.5 hours of convincing to get him to wear the outfit. He is currently in "Wear PJ's day/night" phase. Being aware of the same I had been prepping him for 2 weeks, talking about the plans for the birthday and choosing outfits together.

Our hack is, head out whenever ready. Which turns out to be mostly in the harsh mid morning sun 10:30 - 11:00 am ish. We just make sure to have a canopy of trees at the location we choose. This helps the sunlight to bounce off the ground, instead of hitting you directly and creating ugly shadows.

#2 Decorating + Gifts

We decorated the night before the birthday, after Bubu slept. The rainbow and watermelon are beach towels/mats. I hate spending on decoration unless its going to be used multiple times or is multi-use. These beach mats were perfect as it went with Bubu's current obsession - sky, clouds, rainbows. Plus now we own some really cool outdoor mats, who would not want to sit on a rainbow. To top it, they costed much lesser than buying a one time use backdrop as per theme of the birthday.

I added the gifts as decor. We gifted him some fancy-expensive animals. They are great for small world play.

In the morning we baked tiny cakes x 3, one per person. Topped it with whipped cream and a rainbow made with fruits, to complement the theme.

After waking up, we had a little "reveal" planned for Bubu. He was very surprised to see the decorations and gifts. I documented his reaction on video. These make such great memories.

His favorite I feel was the cheapest item the balloon.

#3 Cake cutting with family

For the birthday morning, we had set a time, for a group video call with close family. This included both our parents and our sibling's family (Bubu's aunts). We sang "happy birthday" for Bubu together and had a short call there after. My mom also did Ovalni, an Indian tradition done on birthdays, over the video call.

#4 Hike

We had taken two day holiday. One before the birthday and one on the day of the Birthday. We had planned to make it special by going on a hike. It's allowed in our state with 6 feet distance. We do go for a walks in the neighborhood daily, but this would be a good change of setting, making it special.

However, the two local hikes we visited had 25-30 cars parked outside. We had not expected this, as it was an odd day Tuesday and 3:00 pm in the afternoon. Instead, we went for a walk along a pond. It's in a quiet neighborhood, in our county and not popular. Luckily there were only 5-7 cars parked when we arrived. I feel this was Bubu's best part of the day. Bubu was so happy to be outdoors, see people, and birds. He couldn't stop talking. And was greeting everyone with an overexcited, high pitched, "Hi!" Considering he is shy otherwise, it just made us realize how much he missed the regular life.

#5 Bonus Photoshoot

As the balloon was his favorite and almost as tall as him I thought it will make a great prop for a picture. We ended up doing a small 5-10 photos worth of photoshoot quickly before the hike.

#6 Treasure Hunt

This was a borrowed idea. I saw a friend who had done a easter treasure hunt at home with a 3 year old. I myself had played treasure hunt when I was 10-12 years old. So I never imagined this is something a lil Bubu can play. Bubu successfully decoded the clues, and enjoyed it too. Being a minimalist I did not add a gift with every clue, instead there was only one gift at the end. A giant bubble set he has been eyeing for some days which our neighbors kids are using recently during lockdown. Bubble sets are a bonus for parents too as bubble's are a great outdoor play tool; to jump, run and get tired, and get a your Bubu to a quick good nights sleep.

Guessing and finding the clue itself was so exciting for him, added so much joy, I am glad to make that decision of only one gift at the end, the focus is to just find clues. Now Bubu requests to we play treasure hunts everyday sans the gift. He enjoys the task of looking for and finding the clues more.

#7 Food

This month is both Bubu's and my partners birthday. As we all are stuck at home, to make pandemic birthday's feel fun and memorable I decided to cook one special dish/s per day that is either Bubu's or hubs favorite. This was a good experience too. Our whole month felt special.