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it’s my paaart… wait a second!

Planning parties, events, dinners … has always kinda been my thing.  Even Cam, who likes to be involved in mostly everything, knows to step back at party planning time.  Apparently young master matty has not yet learned the sacred party mantra in this house.  Sadly this week I’ve come to realize it was me that had something to learn.  Not him.

He has been asking for months (since the girls birthday in july actually) about his own birthday.  He had designs on it being an under water adventure and he wanted to have everyone dress up like a sea animal.  Yep. Totally doable. errrr… right? Then he made a switcheroo on us in October to request a Safari birthday instead – and he wanted the animals of the safari somehow brought to life in our house… for 26 of his closest pals. wha?!  What happened to the mom-planned events with kids of our friends, an easy-ish theme and some great food?  And how are the other 5 year olds going to enjoy a safari adventure or dressing up like a porpoise?  (he is almost the youngest in his class as a december kiddo and we are so aware of those kids who are almost six as our little man spends his last month as a four-year old) Who is this kid and when did he get so opinionated about his parties?

This all likely seems ridiculous to you right now – I know.  Even in reading this back I can understand how absurd it seems that I’m wasting the time and finger power to write about this epic discussion over such a small issue.  But you have to understand.  I have control over … nothing.  There is nothing in my life that I am in charge of – really.  At work I’m a leader buried in ‘yes-buts’, and anti-change so a good day is one where I get to have a good laugh with a colleague.  At home I am regularly told what to do by anyone of the three mini bosses, and a victory is literally a dinner that everyone eats. My time is not my own at any point in a day right now.  So planning a great event – that’s something.  I can do that.  I can make that happen.  Except now I can’t.  Because our little man has a vision all his own.  And it’s very vivid.

To give you a sense – here are a few pictures from the past month alone:  He transformed our rocking chair and a rocking horse from the girls room into a wagon with wild horses and had the girls ride along in the wild west

He really wanted to be a tree-ceratops and wanted to make it himself as much as possible.  This meant a lot of tape and cutting and a whole day of getting through every activity on all fours and with much distress every time the construction paper ripped a bit…

and one of his maaaaany one-man-band set ups.  This kid loves to pretend he is a musician and we are his biggest fans.  No need for real instruments (we have many).  He prefers to imagine other objects into musical masterpieces…

I introduced him to pinterest this week. It was hilarious watching his face as he absorbed all the ideas and crafts people had put up on boards.  What started as a mom-lead adventure guiding him back to super-hero land of last year… ended with his hand on the mouse – clicking madly through boy-party ideas.  I shared with him that I thought having that many kids to our house would be too tough – so we went through websites of venues and activities.  He was unconvinced.

Then he saw some pirate pictures – and the tiny wheels in his head began to visibly crank as he shot a shiny glance my way and said …

“mommy”  (wait for it) “I’ve got a great idea.”

uh. oh.

“I can have a pirate party!  That way it can sorta be under the sea and sorta about princesses and pirates.  The girls and boys will both be happy. There will be a shark and people will walk a plank and there will be ships and we’ll sword fight to save princesses and they will have to have a castle and we’ll have ships that shoot cannons at each other and have a treasure hunt and daddy can be captain hook and I want to be jack sparrow and we’ll make sure no one gets hurt but it will be at our house because i don’t want to go anywhere else but you always say we need to include every one – so we should do that…”

okay. huh. why did i stop yoga? why did I never really start yoga? do we have any of those good strawberry wafer cookies left? why did we have him so close to Christmas? I can’t decorate for the holidays before this party can i? Can I go get another coffee right now or will it keep me up all night? wine. I should just have wine. All these moms are going to think I’m nuts. Our house is going to be destroyed. There will be no swords at this party.  Princesses really? Don’t girls want to be pirates? I have a huge presentation on social media due tomorrow morning. what will the invitations look like? I need to update the exec on our major customer experience shifts this month- where are those examples I saved again? I need to get the laundry done. crap – flu shots – need to make that appointment. I should be writing this down. When is our Christmas party again? Did I pay the nanny last week? The girls have photo day tomorrow and no clean shirts.  dresses it is.  I guess we could make pirate hats… and I think we could make ships out of cardboard…

“mommy? mommy? are you listening to me?  It’s gonna be SO great.”

And I’m sure it will be.  Because it’s his party.