Birthday Bash

It's the age.  My youngest daughter is six and is in kindergarten.  If this were an age named by the Chinese, it would be Year of the Birthday Parties.   In kindergarten, I guess parents start the socialization and attempt at popularity of their children.  They have outlandish birthday parties and invite all the kids.  The more kids that are invited, the more accepted the child is.   Hence, hopefully this acceptance will carry on through elementary school and so on.  Then their kid will be one of the cool ones.  At least they got the ball rolling.  Phew.

I don't mind taking my daughter to the birthday parties.   At least it's an excuse for me to eat cake.   I won't even do the "let's wait until another grown up has a piece and then I'll have one" schtick.   I take the first one when offered so I can break the ice for the others.

The one thing I do hate is when I go to a birthday party and I have to work (i.e. supervise / observe my child).  If it's not a drop off party I really either just want to talk to another parent or sit and read a book.   I'm not going to help cut the cake or hand out the pizza.  Not my job.  Hire an event planner.    If you read one of my earlier blog posts, I wrote about parties at the Funplex.   I had to follow my kids around because the place is such a zoo that it would be easy for them to get lost or even kidnapped.  Not my kind of party.  I prefer the close nit, not open to the public venues.  The ones where the only kids you will see or interact with are the kids that are invited to this particular party.

I just went to a party yesterday and it was at a gym.  At first I was like, how lame.  What are the kids going to pump iron or do jumping jacks?  I almost declined but decided that perhaps I should aid my daughter in her friendship gathering.   I have never been to this gym and when I arrived I was in for a huge surprise.    There was an outdoor pool with a cool slide and tons of lounge chairs.  It looked like a country club pool.  Then I get inside and the place was like a hotel.  It had a salon, a cafe, couches in the entrance.   Sounds awesome, right?  It was a very cool place.   But here is where I start to twitch and feel my inner bitchiness oozing.

1.    The first activity was rock wall climbing.  In theory it's a lot of fun.  However, if you are hosting a birthday party mixing 5 and 6 year old kids, harnesses and rock wall climbing...have experienced supervision.  My daughter is tiny.  6 years old wearing size 4 clothes.  Her limbs are short.  Not really made for rock climbing.  I certainly wasn't going to discourage her and I really wanted her to be successful at it.  So she is hooked up to the harness she takes the first step, and off she goes.  She doesn't get too far, but she's kind of stuck.  There is no person guiding her.  The "attendant" standing next to her isn't even watching her.  She's looking off in space somewhere or perhaps watching another child in another lane.  My daughter is hanging onto the chain with both hands and swinging because she lost her footing and has no idea what the fuck to do.   So I have to run from my window ledge that I have made into a seat and "catch her."  Now, I knew she was harnessed in and that she wasn't going to fall, but I don't think that SHE realized that.  Could the fucking attendant have helped her?  Maybe guide her feet to the correct rock.  Or how about just using words to let my daughter know that she's ok and won't fall down?  Pissed me off.   Of course my daughter wanted to go back on line and try it again - twice.  Fine with me, I would love her to succeed in this rock climbing.  But every time she went up, she got stuck hanging with no help.     DON'T HAVE A PARTY WHERE A PARENT HAS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ENTERTAINMENT OF THE CHILDREN.  Had I not been there, she would have been dangling from the wall for g-d knows how long.

2. Then it was off to the pool for the next activity on the itinerary.  Great, so instead of having a nice little roped off section for the birthday party...they throw the kids into a general swim.  Did I mention that this pool was HUGE?   So, it's not even like these kids are a cohesive group.  They are all doing independent swimming.  When I think of birthday parties, I think of  a group doing something together.  It could be sitting at a table painting pottery, or as simple as playing a game of pin the tail on the donkey.  But this?  It was just like we all happened to be at the same place at the same time, but there was no togetherness.  Plus, it was about 100 degrees out that day.   There were a million people in the pool.  Though I didn't doubt the skills of the lifeguards, I truly felt that there were too many people for the lifeguards to handle.  I stood at the edge of the pool and policed my own daughter.   Go ahead, call me a helicopter mom (which I'm really not).  But I was pretty sure that if some kid dunked my daughter, who can't swim without floaties under water, I would notice it before the lifeguard watching a million other people would.   Again, I was annoyed.   Arrange for a small area for the kids to play together and be supervised.  DON'T HAVE A PARTY WHERE A PARENT HAS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ENTERTAINMENT OF THE CHILDREN

3.  Now this is gonna sound nutty.   I almost bitch slapped a woman over a piece of pizza.   Really.   So they handed out the pizza.  My daughter put a slice in her mouth and then before biting she put it back down on the plate and said "mom".  I thought she wanted me to blow on it, so I started walking over to her.   As I'm walking over, another mom (not the birthday girl's mom) grabbed the plate and gave it to another kid.  As I stand there with my mouth opened and a puzzled look on my face, she says "That was a 'boy' plate."   I swear, I was so shocked and so many things were running through my head that absolutely NOTHING came out.    In my head I was like "What the Fuck???"  Not because it happened to MY daughter.  But who does that?  Who takes a full plate away, from a child, because they believe the design on the plate is gender related?   Like my daughter gave fuck.   She already put the pizza in her mouth!!!!  So then I go to get her another piece, not paying attention to what gender the plate is, and it turns out there is no more left.  Oh, there is pizza left, but not the plain kind the kids love.  Designer pizzas with veggies and crap for the grown ups.   So the plainest I can find is just sauce with some fresh mozzarella.  I mean, I would like it but my girl just gave me a look like, "really?  what happened to my yummy pizza and what's this crap here with no cheese"?  I told her to just eat it.   I became even more furious.  I'm new to this town and I didn't want to cause a scene, but if I could go back in time and point out to everyone else what an ass that woman is, I would.  I'm kind of hoping I see her at kindergarten graduation so I can say to my husband with the pizza nazi in ear shot "that's the wacko who took the pizza from (enter daughter's name here) because it was on a BOY PLATE.   This time,  it was the PARENT who needed supervision at the party, not the kid.

Let's agree, for the future of our youth and for the sanity of all parents, to go back to basics.   House parties with cardboard party hats, a game of "Wonder ball" or hit a pinata, some cake and fruit punch, open presents, get a goodie bag and balloon and call it a day.   When I was younger and went to such parties in my friends' basements, I have no idea if my mom was there or not.  She might have dropped me off or now that I am grown up and know better, perhaps the moms were upstairs boozing it up and gossiping.

 This trend of having parties with the general public involved, not knowing who is a participant of this gathering is and who is not, letting kids run amok without any guidance or supervision must end.  It exhausts me.   I would go hungry, I would go blind, I would jump off a cliff for my kids...but I don't think I can bear another fucking birthday party.    G-d I hope their classmates' parents don't see this.  I would hate for them to be excluded from a party.