I’ll find time to write another day. Today was all about hosting a seventh birthday party.
Kid’s parties really haven’t changed much in the last thirty years. Gifts now come in bags rather than in boxes wrapped in paper with ribbons. Entire closets are dedicated to saving this collection of gently used bags and I suspect have prompted at least one gift-bag-home-reno-weekend. While re-bagging isn’t quite as offensive as re-gifting, it’s getting to be a close second.
The birthday cake has been replaced with chocolate pudding and gummy worms (at least in our house as Hanna has decided she doesn’t like cake or ice-cream).
As hosts, we still serve platters of fruit, veggies and healthy alternatives to the chip table, all of which are thrown out in their entirety while the chip bowls are being licked clean of crumbs.
We can organize games, relays, water balloon tosses, but the kids will still find their own fun exploring a backyard fort or visiting the chip tray four hundred times.
Children emerge from the bushes covered in bug bites but today we have Afterbite cream to instantly remove the sting.
A small paper-cut is wrapped in a Little Mermaid Bandaid and the child is returned to the chip table to enjoy the rest of the licking party.
The hired magician entertains the children while scaring the parents at the same time.
The boys who have been invited to a girl’s birthday party refuse to drink out of a polly pocket paper cup, eat off of a Barbie paper plate or use a Littlest Pet Shop napkin.
The girls refuse to drink white lemonade and insist on pink. They will not drink out of a green cup as the green cups were clearly brought out for the first boy who refused the polly pocket cup and therefore, green cups equal boys.
Loot bags are wizard satchels filled with magic tricks in keeping with the two party themes; magic and chips. This choice to send the kids home with something that would last longer than the car ride home only provokes this question to be asked while chip crumbs angrily fly, “Where are the real loot bags with the candy?”
