Celebrating baby's arrival with a Party just for their siblings!

Throw a BIG Brother or BIG Sister party and celebrate "siblinghood!"

My second child and only daughter, Lady Bug, will be turning one this week. It’s crazy to see how time has flown by this past year and I’m finding myself rather nostalgic. When I was pregnant with her I would often find myself looking at my oldest and only son, Buggie, feeling sad. I was sad about how I was going to change his life drastically. I was sad about how our life of three was going to change. Since I stay at home with him I was sad about the little things we did together that I knew were going to change with the birth of another child. I knew my time, energy and attention would be divided between the two of them. Expressing this sadness to a friend one day she offered perhaps the best advice that had been given to me since I got pregnant with baby number two. “Throw him a Big Brother Party,” she said. She went on to explain that when she had her second party her OB suggested the idea to her. The idea behind it is to celebrate the older sibling taking on a new stage of his or her life – siblinghood.

About a month before my due date we really started talking the idea up with our son. We told him about the cake, ice cream and presents the baby would bring him. We read him a book about being a big brother and taught him her name. He waited with anticipation for her arrival just as much as we did – although his motives were more about the cake and ice cream than it was for her!

The day came and I went into labor. Our beautiful daughter was born and Buggie was finally a big brother. After we had been home for a week we had our family members over for his party.

We had cupcakes. (I had a deal for them from one of those deal websites.)

We celebrated together out on our deck by eating those yummy cupcakes. As you can see Buggie thoroughly enjoyed his. Lady Bug was there too snuggled up on Daddy’s chest.

Then we came inside to open presents. We have been given a lot of hand me down toys from friends with older children. Frequently we stash these and will use them later depending on the quality of the toy. For his Big Brother Party we used a lot of these toys as the gifts.

One of his most prized gifts from his baby sister was an Arthur book he had been asking for.

Whatever you decide to do remember to make adding another child into the mix fun for your little one(s) because they’ll pick up on your excitement and anticipation but probably won’t be as thrilled when baby comes home and life drastically changes.

Have you done anything fun with the birth of a second, third, fourth, etc., child? What did you do?

Elizabeth (aka Bert) is a stay-at-home-mom and contributing writer for She Thinks Media. She lives in the Twin Cities with her husband, Ben, her son Buggie, and daughter Lady Bug.  When she's not trying to convince Buggie to expand his interests beyond Thomas the Train or put his pants back on she's writing about her experiences as a mom on her blog, First Time Mom (FTM). After all, Bert maintains there's a first time for everything, even if you  have more than one child!