"Please No Gifts" - One Life Lesson, in 9 Parts

One rather awesome kid, plus
One fabulous group rate at the local pool, plus
One small measure of maternal guilt for skipping the annual Christmas cookie party and never buying him that swing set, plus
One more pinch of guilt for working, thus restricting his social & after school activities, plus
One set of lifeguards to minimize any incidental drowning, plus
One mega class of 30 kids, plus
One mother's hefty aversion to mountains of plastic crap, plus
One small teachable moment nudge from Mommy, plus
One (or two) reminders that he'll still get lots of stuff at the family party, equals
One memorable birthday blow-out and a mountain of donations for the Crisis Nursery.

Damn, but I am proud of him.
Happy 9th Birthday.

[I don't want to over-sell our altruism because my primary motivation in suggesting this admittedly WAS to keep the small, trip-able, foot-bruising plastastica out of the house but I think it worked out for the other parties too. :) ]

There will be ponies at 9.

Last year The Boy's 7th birthday party was cancelled because he came down with a pestilence of some kind.  Which was unfortunate because Aunt Mary was in town and had helped me make several gallons of sangria for the party - which we tragically were then forced to drink ourselves.  It was moved to the following week, conveniently when my mom was in town, but the sangria was gone by then and I have a very, very strict 2 sangria gallon/month maximum.

Different sangria party.  Different month. Still awesome.

Two-ish years ago my husband was at the St. Louis airport when it was hit by a tornado.  Which I can still only marvel at.

This year, in one of those great confluences of freak luck and damn statistics, my son's birthday party was disrupted, again,

by a tornado, again,
that hit the St. Louis airport, again,
while Matt was... ok, he wasn't there again,
but he was about to be, to pick up a friend, until he took a look at the radar and hunkered with us in the basement for a while.  He left later but ended up getting stuck on a bridge for 4 hours because the tornado damage, turns out, had shut down the freeway.  He doesn't like bridges and called me every 15 minutes to inform me the bridge hadn't collapsed yet.  That was fun.

The Boy has an almost-summer birthday and cheap, lazy parents so we have so far managed to avoid the Friend Party.  I've thrown his class a holiday cookie party the last few years, and there are always a bunch of cousins at the family party so I've managed to not feel too guilty, but he finally asked and he's almost too old for the traditional 2-hour pizza-cake-shoo schtick, so we broke down this year.  He had almost carte blanche and, delirious with the freedom of it all, took almost a month to settle on a couple of besties and Dave & Buster's.  Which, if you've been spared that particular joy, is a bigger, less grimy, mouse-free version of Chuck E. Cheese - though they have a liquor license, so it's almost awesome (Flashing strobe lights and beer!  What could go wrong?).  This was to be a Very Big Deal, as only something built up in an almost-8 year old's head for almost 2 months can be. 

(The family party was also a Very Big Deal, because of mommy's awesome, newly found crafting skills, but more on that later).

The tornado was last Friday night and the party was the following day - it took a while Saturday morning to confirm the place was indeed shut down and then we had to deal with a Very Sad Boy.  This was one of those delicate parenting moments - people's homes were pulverized while my baby was Very Sad over what amounted to a schedule change - but kids can't learn empathy for others without owning their own feelings so there were lots of hugs & cuddles.  In retrospect we probably should have done something more civic minded and Life Lesson-ish, like bring coffee & donuts to the emergency workers, but we would have just been in the way and, well, I didn't want to get stuck on a bridge for four hours either.  Maybe we should have brought donuts to our local FD?  Darn it!  Hindsight!

We ended up going out to lunch with some friends, hit the park, and had a couple of those handy cousins come over later so he survived... and the party was rescheduled.  But when he turns 9?  The universe better show up with ponies and unicorns and fireworks.  And mommy may show up with some donuts for the FD too.
   

No, he's not about to jump.

I still want to start watermarking before I put up better pix...

Ha! Right, I'll get on that any day now.

In Which I Insult Everyone I Know - But Offer Cookies in Apology

Sooo.... Yesterday's post about the minivan was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but I kinda left off the funny and since I know almost no one, online or in real life, who DOESN'T own a minivan I should probably explain that although I've mocked and railed against them as an unpleasant side effect of the otherwise joyful life of suburban parent-hood (see also:  chucky cheese, barney), it only takes one soccer season to be convinced of their necessity, and of the evil genius that is Detroit's lure of spacious 7-passenger seating.  We would totally buy a minivan if we could but our cars (*knock on wood*) are running fine right now and replacing running vehicles isn't exactly in the budget.  Though I stand strong against the built in back seat DVR. 

[At least until they offer to throw in the headsets for free]

Anywhoodle, we held our annual cookie party last Sunday.  The first year, it was just the cousins, the year after I included the neighbors, and in 2010 I invited the soccer team (with absolutely no notice).  This year I finally took the plunge and invited the boy's class.  His ENTIRE class. So we rented the sub-division's clubhouse because a dozen kids + bright green frosting + a metric ton of sprinkles?  My house is never really really clean, but I draw the line at frosting on the ceiling.  This year I also sent real invitations with more than 48 hours notice.  Yay, me!

...Side note about RSVP-ing.  I am sometimes guilty of the Last Minute RSVP.  I was even guilty once (twice?) of the unintentional(!) but ignoble Ignoring of the Invite.  Matt also gently reminded me that tonight was Uncle Mike's party for which I also didn't formally send my regrets though it was 1500 miles away and I kinda assumed it was a courtesy invite only.  I will state, formally & for the record, that Karma is a bitch and I had it coming.  Because less than half the class responded, leaving me to fret over how many cookies were needed.  Leaving me to jump down into a rabbit warren of funky math:   how many cookies per child? (3? 5? 15?)  How many will they eat versus want to bring home, decorated?  How many siblings will show up?  How many cookies will the parents eat?  How many families will RSVP with less than 12 hours to go? (answer:  2)  How many appearances will be a complete surprise? (maybe 2?  4?  I never got a final kid-count).  How many cookies will the dogs eat when I have my back turned?  (See tomorrow's post about the turkey.  If you adopt one of my dogs, I will also send you a gross of complimentary gingerbread men!).  And, most important, how many cookies do those recipes really make?  Because when the sugar cookie recipe and the gingerbread cookie recipe both start with the same 2.5 cups of flour, there is no logical explanation as to why one makes 74 cookies and the other only 25.  And whatever else goes wrong (because something assuredly will), for the love of all that is Good and Sacred, we CANNOT run out of cookies. 

I was determined to have everything done early, like a responsible adult, and planned to make all the dough Friday night, so it could be nice & chilled for rolling & cutting on Saturday.  Sadly, these were the only photos I took.  I was, at the time, highly amused by the 25 pound bag of flour we bought -

It's better if you have a little perspective -  

Oh, HELLO, much better.

If I told you my Thanksgiving Day cranberry mojito story, I relay the following at risk of sounding like a total boozer, but I swear I only had one glass of wine.  Turns out the cookbook's typeface is really small and/or my eyes are getting really bad, because it wasn't till the 4th batch that I noticed it was 1.5 cups of sugar, not butter.  Which you'd think I would have caught, but nooo.... I had actually even said something to Matt about the egregious amounts of butter the (expletive) cookies took and best have a glass of red wine eat some oatmeal to counteract all that potential cholesterol.  He laughed.  I made 3 more batches. Awesome. 

Anyway, even after dumping my first attempts, I was still in the zone, had a production line set up, and my mother in law's fancy new mixmaster running.  I think I ended up making 7-8 batches each, of sugar AND gingerbread? Craziness.  I spent Saturday (after a yummy breakfast with RK) listening to old This American Life episodes and cutting out stars and trees and little people.  I did this ALL DAY but it was weirdly relaxing - roll, cut, 8 minutes in the oven, repeat.  Apparently there's a little bit of Martha Stewart in me somewhere - *shush* don't tell anyone.  Tragically, I took no more photos, though by the time I was finished I was surrounded by feet of cookies.  We ended up with about 10 kids from the boy's class, plus a bunch of other friends, and still sent gallon-sized plastic bags of extra cookies home with people so methinks I might've over-baked a tad, but all in all, a success.  The end.

(Except not.) 
PS:  I had joked that I would've been insulted by the lack of RSVPs but I've never even met most of the parents so they couldn't possibly not like me (yet).  That pendulum then swung to the other extreme when a good half of the parents dropped their kids off at the party and ran.  Nice to meet you!  Sure, I'll watch your child even though you've never met me and I could be a screaming harridan (and never mind there are 15 other kids here and chances of me noticing your one kid slipping out the door and into the street are minimal).  Glad you trust me.  I realize we'll get to that point eventually, and there are lots of parents I know with whom I'd leave my kid at a party but the key concept there is that I KNOW them.  I might be over-protective and crazy, but it seems 6 is too young for Random People to watch?  I'll also acknowledge I used to watch Law & Order: SVU which left me a leetle bit paranoid.  Also, we had grown-up drinks which not enough people stayed to make a dent in, leaving me with a case of... oh wait, that's not a problem.  Carry on. 

Impromptu Cookie Decorating Party

Last weekend we had grown up mimosa cookie party.  The boy was NOT HAPPY he didn't receive an invitation.  Last year we'd had some kids over to decorate his cake trains but that required less frosting slathering and more frosting tips.  Ideally frosting tips that wouldn't have exploded in then-4-year old hands.  Duly noted.  My folks had had cookie parties for years for my younger two siblings, which always seemed like a fabulous time - the grown ups would hang out and drink, the kids would get high on sugar then race around like banshees.  They also knew all the parents - presumably because of years of socializing (I wanted to write 'social effort', but that's a little too revealing).  Since moving to flyover country I've been coasting along on my SILs' social coat tails.  The boy's had plenty of playdates between his cousins and next door neighbors, and gone to lots of those 2 hour birthday parties at the pleasegodwhereismychild pedo-haunts pizza joints, but we're now almost 4 months into Kindergarten and its time to figure out who he's going to be spending the majority of his day with for the next eight years. 

I'm also at a little bit of a disadvantage in this neighborhood because most of moms stay home and arranging play dates with virtual strangers is hard from 35 miles away. 

So did I pull it all together and start my great social project this year?  I did not.  After realizing how sad he was at not being able to come with last Saturday I decided we could have a kids' cookie party too.  With 4 days notice.  On the last weekend before Christmas.  I am a genius.  I thought being that socially oblivious might not be the best first introduction to the 25-30? (I don't even know!  Mom fail) other kindergartners, plus there's a serious space factor.  Even at a miserly acceptance rate, furniture would have to be moved, tables borrowed, blah, blah, blah.  So I stuck with our soccer team list, couple friends from work, and the cousins.  Made it a breezy "know you're busy but drop by for cookies & Christmas cheer" e-vite.  Except one set of cousins was already booked, my coworker caught The Plague, and my son's bff's mom next door still needed to shop meet with Santa.  Friday night I was faced with the very real possibility NO ONE would show up.  Huge parenting disaster.  My back up plan was to borrow the cousins' other set of cousins next door to "give their parents a break".  "Sorry to crash your family Christmas but I need your children because I am socially incompetent". 

Anyway, it all worked out.  My neighbors came through, my coworker dispatched husband and children, cookies were slathered.  Lots of sugar consumed.  Massive crush of dishes created, and as yet unaddressed, in the kitchen.   Notes for next year: 
    PLAN AHEAD
    Move the furniture anyway, no matter how short the guest list.
    Buy a REAL tarp for the floor.  The old set of sheets were a profound fail.
    PLAN AHEAD
    Bake the cookies the night before.  I did make the dough Friday night but then crashed.
    plan ahead plan ahead plan ahead plan ahead PLAN AHEAD.
    Schedule it for a day when your support staff darling spouse doesn't have to work. 
    Don't buy the cheapest paper plates ever made.
Duly noted.

Not too many pictures.  I was still putting out sprinkles, et al as people started arriving so didn't get the picturesque pre-chaos shot.  The after-shots just look unappetizing. 

 She thought putting all that food within easy reach was just delightful.

Ignore the chapped cheeks.  And the close-up crumbs.

 Me, sitting at the table with a beer as things wound down, instead of cleaning the kitchen.

This does not address the original question of reaching out to the other Kindergarten parents. 

Maybe Valentine's day cookies?