A good birthday party for a one-year-old

I was going back and forth about whether to throw a birthday party for Theo or not. The thing is, Theo won't really understand what's going on. He would probably ignore all the children who attend. At this point, a party would serve only two purposes: to make the parents feel better and to amass gifts. I don't need a party to make me feel like a good parent, and while Theo can appreciate gifts and new things one at a time, multiple gifts would just clutter our house. It seems like a lot of craziness with very little return.

But Dad and I figured out what to do. We brought a cake and party favors to his daycare during lunch time. It was like an instant party, because there were 8 children there to sing happy birthday. (Actually, only 6 because one apparently was on permanent time-out and the other was only one and a half years old.) We lit the candle, sang the song, Theo attempted to put the flame out with his finger (anyway, he doesn't even know how to blow properly), we ate the cake, passed out party favors, and then we were done. The whole thing took about 15-20 minutes, which was perfect. Kids really have short attention spans anyway, and as we expected, Theo didn't care about anything except the pleasant surprise of having his parents there during lunch time. Also, no parent had to deal with the extra task of buying a gift and driving their child to and from my house. The only person who had to go out of her way was the daycare provider, and we'll figure out how to thank her.