London - Twelve years ago, my delightfully contrary second daughter was born.
Unlike her sister, who’d arrived in silence 17 months before, Gracie-in-the-middle came out of the sunroof (as Mr Candy called the emergency C-section) howling.
This ear-splitting racket went on for months. She was so noisy we used to regularly rely on her partially deaf Grandpa to give us a few hours’ break from our colicky newborn.
The colic has gone, but the volume hasn’t decreased over the years. It’s all part of her wonderfully unpredictable character.
In some kids, these traits would be a challenge, but Gracie has an irresistible charm which tempers her fiery outbursts and she’s smart enough to have a playful sense of humour everyone adores. She’s also extremely kind.
Personally, though, I am a bit scared of Gracie as I never know what’s going to happen next and how she is going to react.
I walk the mothering tightrope, tip-toeing around number two child, trying to second-guess her. Which is why I was surprised when she declared she didn’t want a birthday party to celebrate her 12th birthday. How contrary.
Throwing parties for offspring has now become as complicated as competing in an Apprentice-style TV challenge.
You need an imagination more colourful than a disney princess to satisfy this worrying trend of increasingly elaborate dos. The parties are becoming ever more extravagant and expensive.
We’ve recently been invited to a birthday nosh-up at a restaurant in London so popular I’d have to marry Brad Pitt to reserve a table, and a swimming extravaganza at a pool that has at least a year’s waiting list to secure.
Those who haven’t got the cash show their competitive edge with carefully crafted, bespoke parties starring DIY cakes that take days to concoct.
One was so beautiful I wondered if the young mum was the secret love child of Nigella and Paul Hollywood.
At another party, the craft-loving mother had made party bags with small individually iced buns featuring our kids’ names, as well as mini photo frames with personal messages etched in glitter.
If you don’t have the time or the money, you can’t compete in this stressful circus, where I sometimes wonder if the need for the most impressive Facebook post ever often overwhelms the actual event.
We struggle to satisfy the Kardashian-style party trend in our house due to our last-minute, chaotic scheduling and poor crafting skills, but I don’t want to let my four kids down. (Though Mabel’s favourite party was the one where she watched a film on the sofa withher friends, scoffing a family pack of custard creams, which is my perfect afternoon, too).
So while I am ecstatic not to be trying to hire a unicorn or taking a gang of pre-teen girls to Lush, the world’s most exotic smelling bath-bomb store, where they seem to spend all their weekly pocket money, I am perplexed as to what to do.
I don’t want Gracie’s big day to pass without celebration. My son, aged nine, suggested we make an “angry face emoji cake”, Mabel, four, wants a mermaid to come for birthday breakfast and the eldest, 13, believes Gracie misheard when we asked her whether she wanted to have a party or not.
So there will be a small gathering of people who are related around the kitchen table, a normal-sized pile of pressies to unwrap and an acapella rendition of Happy Birthday. Candles will be lit and a supermarket cake taken out of its box.
We’re calling it a retro-themed party. By next week, everyone will want one.
Lorraine Candy is editor in chief of Elle magazine.
Daily Mail