Children's parties can swiftly get out of control, much like an Irish wedding

“Was she dead?” Ted asked breezily.

“Was who dead?” Fred said, confused, before ihe realised that the ‘she’ in question was only yours truly, so no biggy. “No, the nurse wanted me to come to see you,” he clarified.

“But Mammy was dead,” Ted added, snuggling down in his duvet with an alarming nonchalance, before announcing it was time for lights out so he could enjoy his birthday to the max the next day.

This being a year where he has quite the social circle, the question of whether to have a party has loomed large since early summer. I was eager to have a proper get-together with all his mates, but due to aggravating factors, I don’t think we will swing it unless it is considerably belated. My friends have expressed that this may not be a bad thing because, to be fair, every party-less cloud has a very peaceful, balloon-free silver lining.

The problem with kids’ birthday parties is that things can swiftly get out of control, much like an Irish wedding. They begin innocently enough — just a few close friends, a sprinkle of family. But somehow, you end up inviting your neighbour’s cousin’s reiki healer’s auntie.

The result is a roomful of strangers wondering why they’re eating cake at someone else’s house, not entirely sure which fruit-juice-fuelled child’s birth they are celebrating.

Then there are traditional party games like pin the tail on the donkey, which sounds great in theory. But in practice, it’s a frantic scramble where everyone is blindfolded and desperately waving sticks around — surely a recipe for anarchy. Someone always ends up poking a hole in the wall or, worse, poking a hole in daddy. As for musical chairs, anyone who knows me knows I refuse to participate in contact sports.

The pièce de résistance is when you’re finally ready to hand out party bags.

You try to present these little trinkets with excitement, only to be met with the cold, disinterested stares of sugar-high children, a response I can only imagine is akin to presenting a tech billionaire with an Etch A Sketch.

It’s all going fine until little Tommy opens his Kinder egg and immediately drops it for the shiny, tiny toy he has just spotted in someone else’s hands, resulting in a spot of playful manhandling where nobody emerges happy, lest of all the mothers trying to break up the melee. It’s like a mini version of Wall Street — everyone vying for the best deal and will step over their mothers (literally and figuratively) to get it.

With the weekend closest to his birthday long booked for a get-together at the grandparents’ house, I agonised over when to throw a party for Ted and his many tiny buddies, who are swiftly replacing his slightly heartbroken mammy as the most important people in his life. Of course, our breakfast on the morning of his birthday went ahead because I like to put as much pressure as possible on myself before the school clock strikes nine, but still, I was eager for my firstborn to do something with his peers.

In the end, our childminder came to the rescue, throwing Ted a fabulous little céiliúradh in her house, which included party crowns, disco beats, and the shop-bought cakes I had procured.

The party in the garden was so successful that the birthday boy didn’t want to come home, only agreeing to do so when I promised him a game called ‘pin the tail on daddy’.

For all my fretting about procuring the perfect gift, his birthday reminded me that little things capture their imagination. In Ted’s case, it was the badge from Nana, the new dinosaur T-shirt from his auntie, and the helium balloon from his childminder, which were his desert island birthday items.

Like a terrifying poltergeist, the same helium balloon has been floating around the house at night for the last three days. More than once, I have woken up convinced we are being burglarised, but instead, I am greeted with a giant letter T. Each time, my husband didn’t do as much as stir. It’s nice to know that my spousal guard dog is less alsatian and more dalmatian when it comes to protecting the fortress. But to be fair, as a parent of young children, it’s safe to say that if I ever did wake up to a robber, I’d probably just tell him to keep the noise down while he ransacked the place and turn my back on proceedings.

Sleep — especially during major life events like birthdays and comedy tours — is so precious even larceny wouldn’t keep me awake.

The thing about children’s birthdays is that as parents, we want them to be the most special day because it is a day where we are reminded that for all their propensity for talking about your death with a degree of nonchalance and pinning tails on your bottom, the world was made so much better the day they came into it.

And sometimes it’s nice to celebrate that, even if you only have shop-bought cake to do so.