Liam turned one on Saturday! I’ll post pictures of the party soon (it was so much fun), but I wanted to share how we handled gifts for our little one year old.

We live in a pretty small house with limited closet space. We knew that no matter how much we tried to keep Liam’s first birthday party small, we were going to have lots of family and friends who wanted to celebrate with him, and rightfully so. However, we also knew that if everyone brought a gift for the birthday boy, we wouldn’t be able to fit everything in our house. Plus, he has everything he needs (and then some), so we first decided that we would ask people not to bring gifts to the party.

After hearing from some other moms who went the “no gifts” route and that 99% of poeple brought gifts anyway (and the 1% who didn’t felt bad seeing that everyone else did), we tried to think of another way to limit the extra stuff but still allow people to bring something. I thought that we could ask for donations instead. After doing some research, we decided to ask for new unwrapped toys, clothes, and books to donate to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. We included an insert with the invitation so people had some ideas of things the kids that were around Liam’s age in the hospital really needed (things they could wear or play with in bed were of high priority), and asked that everyone bring a card so Liam could send a thank you note on their behalf.

A few people still brought gifts for Liam, but everyone was very generous and we had four big bags to take to the hospital for the kids! Liam had no idea what was going on, of course, but I look forward to telling him about it one day when he will understand. Here he is with all his donations (in his cute little shirt and tie).

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I would love to continue this tradition for future birthday parties, as I think it instills positive values in Liam and even the other kids who help their parents pick out the gifts to donate. My childhood best friend was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 9 and I know that these donations can make a big difference in the healing of some of these kids who are in and out of the hospital month after month.

For the health of the patients, we weren’t allowed to distribute the gifts to them, but I snapped this picture of Liam in the lobby of the hospital after we unloaded the goods. He seems happy to be giving back in his own way!