Birthday parties are the bane of my existence as a parent. Seriously. I mean it. If there were one thing about parenting I could eliminate, it would be birthday parties. I’m sure that sounds all Scrooge and such, but I’m not actually saying I wish to eliminate kids’ celebrations from the face of the earth (I’m not saying that, but I’m willing to hear arguments). I’m merely telling you my life would be approximately one hundred kazillion times simpler if birthday parties didn’t exist. It’s the difference between taking a calculus course and taking a calculus course where all the math has been removed.
The problem with kids’ parties is they are no fun. Pin the tail on the donkey? Piñatas? Musical chairs? Sure, these things seem like fun to kids, but kids also like Brittney Spears and powdered sugar with food coloring marketed as candy. They only think it’s amusing to participate in a three legged race because they haven’t ever heard of funneling beer, novelty cakes shaped like a woman’s breasts and streaking through the Denny’s parking lot at 2:00 a.m. I’m sure when these kids get older they will look back on their Buzz Lightyear themed party and wonder why it never occurred to them to order a stripper, but that doesn’t help me, as the dad, right now.
Of course I’m joking, as it would be entirely inappropriate to streak through the Denny’s parking lot and I’m pretty sure referencing children and strippers in the same paragraph can get you jail time in seven states. The problem is that kids want to do kid things at their birthday parties, which might not be a huge problem for me - as a guy some people have referred to as “immature” on numerous occasions, including this morning when I was making fart noises with my armpit at the breakfast table, I have to admit to liking a game of bobbing for apples as much as the next kid (by the way, it was my daughters, not my wife who thought I was immature). The problem comes when the kids expect me to be the guy running the game rather than playing and winning all the cool prizes, such as the awesome water gun that sprays, like, 30 feet and stuff. Instead of knocking kids out of the way and filling my shirt up with candy after the piñata bursts, kids expect that I will merely supervise.
What a rip-off.
The good news is that kids parties these days don’t have games like pin the tail on the donkey, three legged races and piñatas. Why, you might ask? Because kids these days don’t have their birthday parties at their homes – they have them at specific birthday party venues, such as Chuck E. Cheese, Gymboree, Dave’s House of Rock Climbing and Scissor Fights, and my personal favorite, House of Tacky Sculptures Your Kids Will Paint And Bring Home And You Will Never, Ever Be Able To Throw Away Because That’s What a BAD Parent Would Do. I might be able to get on board with the whole sculpture idea were it not for two things: first, the sculptures tend to be things that don’t really beautify the home or serve a useful purpose – I mean, a plaster sculpture of Pika Chu is nifty and all, but it doesn’t really go with anything else in the house. Second, these things are painted by kids, and let’s face it, you wouldn’t give a kids a paint brush and tell him to go nuts on the living room wall. Why? Because kids can’t paint – they’ve got no talent because they’re kids. And yes, this means your kids. Their artwork sucks and if you didn’t know who did it, you’d be horrified by their overuse of pastels and what can only be described as glitter cruelty.
In the end, what you are left with is a design that your kid didn’t have any part in designing and a really, really bad paint job. At one point we had a total of seventeen of these things hanging on the wall in our house. Seventeen. Luckily, when we moved to our current apartment we ended up some distance from the nearest House Of Plaster Crap (there is a House of Clay Crap up the street, but it must expensive because we haven’t been to more than three parties there).
The point is that most of the time kids have their parties somewhere besides their homes. Which is a semi-rational decision on the part of the parent – after all, it eliminates the need to clean up afterward so you can stop worrying about the fact that children eat cake like pigs at a trough. It also cuts out space and seating concerns. Best of all, it completely stamps out the idea that some parent will drop their kid off for the party then fail to show up for six hours, leaving you with an extra kid while you try to clean ice-cream stains out of the living room carpet. On the contrary, hosting a party at Chuck E. Cheese tends to encourage parents to stick around because of the aura of non-control and confusion that surrounds that place. No one wants to leave their kid somewhere that rambunctious where the parental oversight is that loose. In fact, you’ll find that as a general rule, the more confusing and idiotic the place you host the party is, the more parents will stay to help. It makes a good argument for having your next party at Steve’s Tire Fire and Dirty Needle Park instead of your own home.
The only exception to the no birthday parties in your own home rule is slumber parties, which apparently don’t lend themselves well to Chuck E. Cheese. Slumber parties are the proverbial double edged sword to parents – on the one hand, they are much more cost effective than hosting the party elsewhere, but on the other hand, about half way through the night you’d be willing to pay three or four times as much as an outing at Chuck’s to get these kids the hell out of your house. But more on that later.
In order to properly convey to you the sheer magnitude the effect of birthday parties – by my own children’s parties and the parties of others that they attend – have on me and my family, I want to share with you the events of a weekend not more then a month ago. One weekend. Keep that in mind – these events take place from Thursday through Sunday. So, not a real weekend – more like two thirds of a college weekend.
Let me start by giving a little background information on birthdays in general in the Bradbury family. The first thing you should know is that these kids always have a minimum of two parties in honor of their birthday. We have a party at the house with just the family on their actual birthday. Then we have a party at my parents’ sometime near their birthday – whenever we happen to be in Maine closest to the actual birthday. These two parties are a given. When the kids are in kindergarten, they get to have a big party with either the entire class or most of it – the following years they get a smaller gathering for a slumber party if it’s workable and we have time. Occasionally we will find ourselves at my extended family’s “monthly” celebration of whatever cousins, aunts and uncles happen to be having birthdays that month. There have been birthdays that get four celebrations, each time complete with cake and ice-cream.
I don’t mention this to complain – this is the result of having a close extended family that also wants to celebrate the birthdays of our kids, so I can’t find fault with this situation. I just want to mention it so you understand why I’m such an obnoxious complainer.
I should also tell you that last year when Edward IV was in foster care before he was placed with us, no one remembered his birthday. His social worker had taken him to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon and the doctor noticed it was his birthday. “No it’s not,” Edward IV replied when the doctor mentioned it – he dropped it, but Edward IV’s worker caught it and stopped on the way home to buy him a present for around $15 because that was all the money she had with her. Contrast this with the four different parties Queen Mab and ACHILLES sometimes have.
Needless to say, we decided to be sure The Duchess of York, Edward IV and Lady MacBeth will all get the best birthday parties in the world from this point on, even if it means I have to go broke occasionally stay up for a week preparing.
Turns out that was a fairly accurate prediction.
As usual, I started off the series of mass confusion by making a monumental error in judgment. I had a specific place in mind to have The Duchess of York’s birthday party – a place called Gibbs gym which was owned a school years and years ago. We once went to another kid’s party there and it’s fairly inexpensive but very fun. One of the workers runs all kinds of games they play in the gym, like basketball and floor hockey, etc. The kids run and get tired (which, incidentally, doesn’t have any immediate visible effect – they seem to get more hyper the longer they run, but as soon as you get them in the car, they crash like a poorly made Chinese rocket) and all we have to do is bring the cake and ice-cream and assorted party favors. Where I made the mistake was assuming that because I had only been to one party there before that the gym would be easy to book. I’m not sure what gave me that idea, but it couldn’t have been more incorrect if I’d assumed President Bush would be making a case for invading the gym to free up space for our party.
When I called a month in advance, they laughed. Laughed like people who had heard the funniest thing ever from some random guy who called their switchboard. They called other people over to listen in on the conversation.
“Um, yes sir, I didn’t hear you correctly the first time.” <
muffled giggling>. “Could you repeat what you just asked me?”
“Yes, I asked if you had an opening on the weekend of the 28st for a birthday party.”
<
muffled hysterical laughter>
“Ok, <
giggle> sir, let me just <
snort> check on that for you.” At this point I could have sworn I heard someone peeing their pants. “Ah, yes – February 28th is no good. How about some time in the summer?”
<
non-muffled hysterical laughter>
I’m willing to admit, now, that I may have underestimated the mass appeal of renting a gym and playing dodgeball for a birthday party. Of course, I’m admitting that to you, the reader. In now way, shape or form am I admitting that to my wife.
After calling 32 other birthday party venues, I begin to get discouraged. Discouraged in the sense that I was ready to throw myself in front of a train. Problems were beginning to stack up on each other. For one thing, I had no place to hold this birthday party and that was a big problem for the reasons outlined above, not to mention the fact that we had plans for another party at the house on the weekend of the 28th (more on that in a minute), and two Saturday parties in a row at the house seemed like enough to turn our downstairs neighbors into serial killers, and given the fact that they are the Best Neighbors In The World Whom We Intend To Take With Us When We Move I was concerned about their sanity.
The biggest problem, by far, was that my wife had been telling me for months that we needed to get this place booked and I told her she was crazy and this place would never fill up. Obviously, to tell her I couldn’t get a time would be to admit that she was correct, and that would give her the upper hand, which she would undoubtedly use to foil my Secret Motorcycle Plans (more on that story later). Clearly I needed to come up with a reasonable substitute to cover for my ineptitude.
I was on the verge of admitting defeat and throwing away all my secret motorcycle plans when the fates smiled upon me in the form of the Boys and Girls Club. One last call to the B&GC revealed that someone had tentatively booked Saturday the 28th but had never confirmed and never paid. I had to wait three days for the party coordinator to attempt to track this person down and find out if they were still interested in the time slot. It was like waiting for lab results to come back after a physical where your doctor “didn’t like the looks” of something – I spent three days in abject terror waiting for an answer, meanwhile knowing that if it didn’t work out I had just wasted three more days.
Thankfully, the original reservation was cancelled and I was free to take this lone spot. A spot at 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday night. Exactly the time when everyone wants their kids getting all sugared up on cake and ice-cream. It didn’t matter to me – it was a time and a place to have a birthday party.
I called Stacy at work to give her the relevant info. Swimming for the first hour followed by pizza, cake and ice-cream the next hour.
“Isn’t that a little late for a first grade party?” Stacy asked me, suspiciously. She’s sharp, that one.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Lots of kids have their parties that late. The lady at the club said that was the best time spot because no one else but the cleaning crew would be there.”
“What happened to Gibbs gym?”
“The gym? What gym?”
“Gibbs gym – the place we decided to have the party?”
“Oh, yeah, the gym. I thought you were talking about my Uncle Jim. He said he couldn’t make it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oops, gotta run – dog’s throwing up on the rug!” Click. Phew! Dodged a bullet there – I don’t think she suspected a thing. Muwahahaha - Secret Motorcycle Plans still in tact.
So, that was one party set up, one to go.
For some reason, we decided to have The Duchess of York’s party the same weekend of Queen Mab’s party. At the time, it seemed like a scary, but sound decision. Why? To be honest, I really don’t know. I chalk it up to momentary loss of touch with reality – it happens to all parents. One minute you’re cruising along thinking you know what you are doing, the next you say to yourself, “The baby is tired and hungry and I really should get her some lunch and put her down to nap, but I think I’ll try to run to the China shop and pick up that new stemware first.” It happens.
Anyway, Queen Mab’s party was to be a sleep over with no more than three girls. Why a sleepover? Because Queen Mab has already had her big expensive party at a birthday party venue (a place called The Birthday Place or something of that nature) when she was in kindergarten. And you only get one of those in our house because they are expensive and I lack the requisite gold bricks shooting out my ass to do that for five kids every year. So, instead of a birthday party at Chuck’s, we have a few friends – no more than three, and I mean it – sleep over.
Once Queen Mab had decided which seven girls she wanted to spend the night, invitations were sent out and the party moved to the planning stage.
Queen Mab’s tips for increasing the number of guests allowed from 3 to 7.
1. Invite a set of twins – claim you can’t invite one without the other. For some reason this only counts as one person.
2. Invite one friend who you know will tell everyone else making the situation at school really uncomfortable and causing all kinds of problems with your other friends.
3. Beg and plead to have just five friends until Mom and Dad cave in.
4. Claim that now you’ve invited five people you can’t very well leave out your other best friend.
5. Or that other best friend.
Queen Mab’s party was set for Friday night and The Duchess of York’s for Saturday night. Hmmm – this seemed like a weekend that would make any parent want to hang themselves with crepe paper, but we like to overdo things here at Mission Control. Why have two kids when you can have four? Why not have a fifth? How about a dog? And a cat? Why not purchase a pack of rabid weasels?
After a little last minute scrambling, I managed to find three birthday invitations that I had forgotten about. Not three more invitations to either Queen Mab or The Duchess of York’s parties, but invitations sent to my children to attend other kids’ parties at various points during the weekend – ACHILLES and Edward IV were both invited to parties on Saturday and ACHILLES to another one on Sunday. Add that to Sunday morning mass and CCD, and that pretty well takes care of the weekend.
Now that you have a clearer picture of what the weekend schedule looks like, let’s go ahead and zip on back to Thursday. Oh, no, I want to go a little further back to Wednesday night when I was at class, because that was where confusion really set in and made a cozy little nest in our lives.
I have two classes on Wednesday nights – Developmental Psychology and Psychological Research Methods. My psychology classes are great, especially when they deal with children, like DP does. I find myself looking at the research and the writings and comparing it to my own children and I have come to one of two conclusions: either psychologists have children completely figured out, or they are complete morons. For some reason it has been harder than you might think to make the final determination.
I called home between classes to say hello to Stacy and she informs me that Queen Mab casually mentioned needing 24 of something – cupcakes, cookies, etc – to bring to class the next day to celebrate her birthday. Nice of Queen Mab to inform me at a convenient time – I have class until 10:40 that night.
When class is over, I go home and make cupcakes for everyone in her class. At about half past midnight I am putting the frosting on the cupcakes before I go to bed. But, at least I know that when I wake up, Queen Mab will be thrilled that I have worked so hard and late to ensure she has a snack to share with her class on her birthday. She’ll appreciate all my effort and the look on her face will be worth all the sleep I lost.
You parents can see where this is heading.
“I can’t bring anything in today,” she said the next morning. “I have to ask the teacher at least one day in advance.”
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that despite what my instincts were telling me at that moment, prison is probably not easier than having five kids. I looked at Queen Mab and asked, “Are you serious?”
At this point Queen Mab, being a very perceptive child, felt that she has walked into some kind of trap - she did the only thing a kid can do in that situation: she backed away slowly until she was near the door, then fled.
After I get the older four off to school, it’s time for Lady MacBeth and I to start out mad scramble to purchase birthday presents and party materials for Queen Mab’s second birthday party (the first being the celebration with relatives in Maine, remember? You need to keep up). This birthday party is the family only affair, but this is where Stacy and I give Queen Mab her presents, so it seems wise for me to start shopping for them. Why didn’t do the shopping earlier? Why did I wait until the last second? Because, you fool, nothing gets done around here until it reaches CRISIS-RED-ALERT-WE’RE-ALL-GOING-TO-DIE level. See, if I do things before they reach CRISIS level, I might start doing things that don’t really need to get done, and I just don’t have time for that. For instance, I got a call from a teacher at school requesting that I send in 30 empty film canisters to be used in a class project. Because I am a moron, whenever people ask me for something I always say yes. Noooo problem, I told her. I would pick some up at the color lab where they have an enormous box full of them.
At this point, I have two options: I can go and get these film canisters right away, thereby eliminating the need for worrying about them. Or, I can opt to immediately forget about these film canisters and never give them another thought until the teacher calls one morning and says “We need them this afternoon.” If I go with number two, I find out how bad the teacher really needs these annoying things. If I go with number one, I might make an unnecessary trip to the color lab only to discover that the original project was cancelled and I have not only wasted time, but I now have this enormous bag of empty film canisters which I can’t throw out because that would be environmentally unsound but for the love of all that’s holy I must get rid of them before the children get home from school because the little rugrats are bound to spot them and they’ll fuss and whine until I let them have the entire bag for their “craft supplies” and despite my strenuous warnings that I’m going to throw these things out if I find them lying around the house but you and I both know that I’m going to be tripping over empty film canisters until the day I die and even then some kid will probably slip five or six into my coffin. In light of this likely scenario, I choose to wait until the teacher calls me and tells me she really, really needs them – like, right now.
This is how I prioritize things these days. If I have time for 3 to-do items today, but have 73 items on my to-do list, it is important to have a system for weeding out superfluous crap. Of course, if you know me and I’ve blown off something I was supposed to do for you, do not take that to mean I thought your stuff was superfluous crap – it just means you didn’t relate its relative importance to me in a strong enough manner.
Which means I end up shopping for birthday presents the morning of the birthday. And making a cake. And buying ice-cream, balloons, and various other party favors. And cleaning the house. And wrapping presents. And decorating the house. And getting all this done before nap time because as any parent who has a child who still takes a nap knows, YOU DO NOT MESS WITH NAP TIME. Luckily, I had a plan. My plan went something like this: run around like a chicken with her head cut off all day long until I feel like I am in danger of dropping dead after suffering adult-onset Freaking Out.
The day went as smoothly as could be expected. By “smoothly” I mean “not at all smooth.” I was going to attempt to relate to you all the chaos, scrambling and tension I experienced that day, but I have neither the time nor the patience to relive that particular period of my life. Also, somehow I squeezed more activity into that day than time would allow me to recreate here – it was as if I bent the time space continuum in order to finish my Herculean tasks (probably “Herculean tasks” is a tad misleading – if Hercules had been given my tasks, he would have given up immediately and resigned himself to being a farmer or a goat herder or a dung gatherer or whatever other uncool job he would have landed had he not been off tricking Atlas into holding up the world).
Instead, I figured I would simply try to relay it in terms everyone else can understand: Imagine that you had two dozen poorly trained monkeys loose in your living room, ten gallons of paint in open buckets, a foghorn which blasts every ten seconds in your ear and an evil robot that is armed with a hunting rifle. All these things are inside your house and you have to capture the monkeys, disarm the robot, disable the foghorn and get the monkeys to paint the walls without spilling any and accomplish all this before President Bush gets to your house, because he is hosting a summit on world peace in your living room with the heads of six rogue nation states and if you don’t get everything done by the time he shows up, the talks are off.
Yes, I know I just said “President Bush” and “summit on world peace” in the same sentence. Yes, I know I have a better chance of having 24 monkeys paint my living room while an evil robot takes random shots at me than having Bush show up at a peace summit. It’s just an example – work with me here, people.
If only my day had been as simple as dealing with poorly trained monkeys and killer robots – instead, I got the completely untrained children and a killer headache. To give you an indication of just how well the morning went, I missed naptime completely – shopped right through it. You already know my feeling on naptime. Consequently, after I picked up the older children at school, I still had more running around, more things to buy, more things to wrap, etc.
Hopefully, at this point you are beginning to feel just how frazzled I was by the time I loaded all the children - who were chomping on massive amounts of Big League Chew that had mysteriously appeared from somewhere (at that point I didn’t care where they got it so long as no one used a weapon in the process) - and the dog into the van to go pick up Queen Mab’s requested birthday meal of KFC (why do I take the dog with me everywhere I go? Because having a puppy with that might uninate, deficate or vomit in a completely embarrassing place adds an element of danger and excitement to my day – it makes me feel like James Bond only not cool, not rich and not attracting the ladies). Time had nearly run out on my day – I wouldn’t be able to attend the actual birthday party because I had a class which was only meeting six times all semester, so I couldn’t ditch. I had about 20 minutes to drive to KFC, pick up some food and then get home in time to complete the duty swap with Stacy. Meanwhile, the kids – sensing they only have a few fleeting moments with me that day - are making a last ditch effort to scramble my brain completely with a combination of Gameboy noises, screaming and singing. Things seem to have reached a boiling point in my hectic day.
That was when ACHILLES yelled from the back seat, “Dad, I dropped my gum on the dog and it’s stuck.”
Dad, I dropped my gum on the dog and it’s stuck. I dropped my gum. On the dog. And it’s stuck. Gum. On the dog.
Did you ever have one of those moments where you seem to float outside yourself and watch the whole ridiculous scene from afar? People who have near death experiences describe this feeling, sometimes referred to as an out of body experience. I had that exact out of body feeling when ACHILLES announced that he had dropped his giant wad of gum into the dog’s fur. Of course, I wasn’t having the near death experience – ACHILLES was.
This was actually more of a moment of clarity – I get them every so often when I’m dealing with the kids. You see, I try to be very exact. I like schedules, I like order, I like knowing what’s expected of me and being able to accomplish my goals, which isn’t to say I can’t think outside the box – I can come up with very innovative solutions to problems including time constraints (for instance, how do you get Big League Chew out of Schnauzer fur in less than 30 seconds?). I don’t mind being overloaded as long as I know all the parameters of a given situation so I can effectively deal with it. The problem is, having children isn’t really conducive to that sort of management. I never know all the parameters to a given situation and I can’t even begin to make them follow a time line in a proper manner (which isn’t to say I don’t try to make them). But kids are kids and I’m certainly not going to change that.
Every once in a while, I get overloaded with Kidness (no, that’s not Kindness – it’s Kidness, which is that fluctuating sense of insanity and frustration and joy and love that is the spirit of being a parent). When this happens, I react in one of three ways: I might go completely ballistic and yell for five minutes straight at the kids whose eyes will immediately glaze over as they tune me out and stop listening because that’s what I have found my kids do when I raise my voice. Option two is to remove myself from the situation, go into the bedroom and maybe cry, then go back out to face the kids and yell at them for five minutes straight at the kids whose eyes will immediately glaze over, etc. The third option is that I start to laugh at the utter absurdity of it all, decide that there are much worse things that could be happening in my life and move on without pitching a hissy fit.
While options one and two are, unfortunately, easier to perform than number three, laughing at how silly it is to be so overwhelmed is so much more satisfying. It lets me step back and appreciate how wonderful life is and how blessed I am to have these five beautiful and amazing children. It makes me just look at the kids and hope that they enjoy their childhood as much as they can. It really is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world.
And when I figure out a way to replicate it, bottle it and sell it WITHOUT having five children who drop gum on the dog I’m going to make millions.
Because I had this moment of clarity, ACHILLES managed to make it out of this situation relatively unscathed. The dog, however, required a little hair styling as I was forced to cut a large chunk of fur off the back of his neck. “Try putting peanut butter on it,” Queen Mab suggested. I explained to the dear sweet child that at that point I would have shaved my own head before I put peanut butter in it had gum been dropped in my hair. I don’t have time for experiments like peanut butter. Besides, the huge chunk of missing fur makes him look like some deranged punk dog – I’m considering dying his hair green to match.
I finally arrived back home just in time to shave the dog and hand the kids off to Stacy who had to step into my birthday party plans and play master of ceremonies for the evening while I went to a psychology of learning class. But this was just the pre-party party – like stretching out before the big game. And in this situation, “the big game” was a slumber party with seven friends.
The next night was the slumber party. I just want to give a couple of pointers to all you slumber party novices.
1. “Eh – they’ll go to sleep when they are tired” is a bad, bad plan. I cannot stress this enough. They will not go to sleep when they are tired. When they are tired, they’ll wake up anyone else who might have already fallen asleep just for more company.
2. Bobbing for apples may seem like a sweet and charming kids game, and I’m sure when six year olds play it is. But when ten year old girls bob for apples in the tub, one will decide that “swimming for apples” sounds like more fun, which will cause the rest of them to follow suit.
3. A group of fourth grade girls will provide enough ear piercing shrieks in a 12 hour span to cause more hearing loss than working inside a 747 engine compartment for 30 years.
4. Make sure your smoke detectors are working.
5. Someone is going to end up crying because someone else said something mean about them. Usually it will be one of the parents.
6. “How much could they possibly eat?” will be taken as a personal challenge to the girls who will then force you to cook thousands of pancakes and consume them with ten gallons of syrup.
7. Try to have a television in your own room.
8. You’ll spend most of the evening feeling incredibly old and trying to remember when Friday night didn’t look anything like this.
9. You’ll feel even older as you get angry because the kids aren’t asleep at midnight and then you realize, “I used to just be getting started at midnight.”
10. You are not cool, you do not know any good party tricks and nobody wants to talk to you so would you puh-lease just go back in your bedroom?
The best part about this slumber party was that the next day was a large Girl Scout field trip to someplace and most of the girls were going, so I got to dump these tired, cranky girls all on a couple of Scout leaders and then go home. That worked out very well for me.
Imagine a scene where you are a Girl Scout troop leader and you’ve been planning a Saturday morning field trip for weeks, maybe even months – you put your blood sweat and tears into this thing to make sure everything is special for your little scouts. You have visions of this field trip touching the lives of these girls, perhaps even causing one or two of them to have life altering epiphanies as a result. This, you think, will be the most perfect Girl Scout field trip in the history of scouting.
You’re waiting in the parking lot of the school for your troop to arrive and your magical journey to begin. Suddenly, from around the corner, you see seven of them coming at you like a pack of wild dogs about to descend upon a road kill raccoon. None of them have combed their hair, they are dressed in a range of clothing varying from winter jackets to t-shirts, some have syrup in their hair, a few are already fighting with each other and all of them have big black circles under their eyes. Then they asshole in charge of them says, “Well, good luck wherever the heck it is you’re going! See you at drop-off!” and runs away like he’s absconding with the church funds.
I’m still not sure where the girls went, nor am I clear how the girls handled themselves – the troop leaders haven’t spoken to me since.
Later in the day I called parents of one of ACHILLES’s friends and begged them to let my kids hitch a ride with their kid to the birthday party for a third friend wherever the heck that birthday party may have been. Meanwhile, I planned to take Edward IV to a birthday party at a movie theater in the neighboring town. I had intended to simply send him with another friend’s parents, but he had been having one of his little “spells” where he was having trouble “listening” and “doing what he was told” and sometimes he needed a “strong voice of guidance” from me, so I decided to take him.
Now we’ve got kids spread out all over the map and Stacy still needs to drag The Duchess of York and Lady MacBeth around to pick up last minute stuff like a cake and some ice-cream – you know, the little extras that make a birthday party a birthday party. And it’s going to be a tight schedule all day long because Stacy needs to be back at the house in time to meet ACHILLES and Queen Mab when they get dropped off again and I need to be back at the house by five when Juliet’s family (Juliet is a bio-sibling to Edward IV, The Duchess of York and Lady MacBeth) is expected. Although the timing is very tight, we decide we can make everything work as long as nothing unexpected happens.
Nothing unexpected happened, alright. That’s because, as everyone expected, I screwed up the start and finish time of the birthday party Edward IV is going to and we arrive 45 minutes early which will make us 45 minutes later getting home. Edward IV and I take the opportunity to nap a little in the car (right - like Edward IV ever considered going to sleep – I did, though) because it’s just that perfect distance away from home where we don’t want to go back but we don’t really want to stay, either.
The birthday party Edward IV attended was at a movie theater – one of those old style single screen cinemas that people get super nostalgic about and chain themselves to the doors to prevent the wrecking crews from tearing it down to make way for the bazillion screen multi-plex. I, however, harbored no sentimental feelings whatsoever toward this theater after I sat in old seat, ate stale popcorn and attempted to determine if the sound from the movie was actually on or if someone had merely left a tiny AM radio going somewhere in the back of the room. Add to that 20 screaming kindergartners (yes, screaming – it was a private screening, which the kids mistook for “private screaming”) and you’ve got recipe for instant headache. Oh, also, the theater provided a bottomless cup of soda for all guests which was nice because what group of 5 and 6 year olds really need is 13 cups of Mountain Dew before they gorge themselves on cake and ice-cream.
Are you running out of steam with this birthday weekend story, yet? Are you tired of hearing about it? If you think it sounds long, you should have been there living it. Good news, though – we’re nearing the end of this story. Edward IV and I left the party a little early to go back home and meet Juliet and her family.
Juliet was in the process of being adopted by a wonderful family in Western Mass, the Capulets. They have two biological children – boys ages 16 and 12. Juliet had been with them just under a year at this point and things were going well for her. We had invited them to The Duchess of York’s party and they were nice enough to drive all the way out here for the pool party at the Boys and Girls Club.
I had me the Capulets on several occasions at DSS, so I wanted to make sure I was there when they arrived, as Stacy hadn’t met them yet. I made it home without about five seconds to spare.
The kids immediately took off started playing together. ACHILLES and Edward IV had a blast playing with Malvoleo, Juliet’s brother. The Duchess of York, Queen Mab and Juliet all had a great time playing together, too. After they played for a while, ACHILLES approached Stacy and asked her if Juliet and her brothers are friends or relatives or what. We weren’t really sure what to say to that because they almost are relatives in a strange round-about way. Eventually, ACHILLES came up with Frother as a term – a combination of friend, brother and other according to him. The term works well enough for me.
I have to be honest when I tell you that the rest of the evening is kind of a blur – I was completely exhausted and ready to collapse and only sheer willpower and the knowledge that it was almost over carried me thorough. I remember herding the whole crew over to the boys’ and girls’ club, having them change into swimsuits, buying a bunch of pizza, forgetting the ice-cream and running home to get it, serving food, watching kids swim, teaching someone how to play bumper pool, eating a bunch of crap, trying to fit six bags worth of garbage into the one garbage bag we had, sweeping up the floor in a trance, herding everyone back to our place, saying our goodbyes to the Frothers, sending the kids to bed, deciding that there was simply no way we were going to church he next morning, laying down on the couch with all my clothes on still sticky from the party mess and drifting off into blissful sleep.
Then I woke up with three kids sitting on me at 6:00 am trying to get reception for some cartoons on our crappy TV. That’ll teach me to sleep on the couch. (I should also point out – for you non parents – that kids get up at the same time no matter what time they go to bed. You can always spot a rookie parent when they say, “Well, junior is up late tonight but he can sleep in tomorrow because it’s Saturday.” Ha! He can sleep in, but he won’t – it’s part of the kids’ code.)
So that was the great birthday weekend of 2004 – never to be replicated until, what, 2005? You’re all invited
