Being heavily pregnant, I was very tempted to forgo my second child’s birthday party.

But deep down, I felt my duty as a second-born child myself (and also a middle child) to preserve all childhood equality in the family.

We had a huge family birthday dinner bash at our place. 30 or so members of our family turned up, with an array of Chinese and Malay food. It was great!

My son wanted a Star Wars light saber cake, but after a few days of planning, I couldn’t bring myself to make a cake with bright red icing. So I made a Death Star cake and decorated it with Star Wars characters.

I made a chocolate fudge cake, shaped it into a dome. I used ready-to-roll icing, and coloured it with organic food colouring to make a pale blue-grey. Ok. I admit. Not the most interesting cake to look at, but my 4 year old loved it, and my family members had a good chuckle.

A few days later, I organised a kid’s party for a few of Sean’s kindergarten friends.

Again I was going to skip the “children’s birthday party”, with the excuse that we’ve already had a party for him. But the poor guy has never had a kid’s-only birthday party, so I gave in.

It was held mid-week, in the early afternoon, in our backyard. I borrowed a whole heap of riding toys (and a roller coaster!) from my local toy library. We had a few party games, kid’s party food, another cake, bubbles, lolly bags. The kids ran around and had a blast.

I kept things low-key and relaxed for myself. So overall it was actually really easy and stress-free!