Gracie wanted a birthday party this year. Not just a birthday party with all her family, like she is accustomed, but one where she invites school friends over. We decided that this wouldn't be a problem and proceeded to make the plans. Grace invited five other girls leaving us with a very manageable six six year olds to deal with. Let me tell you, 6 girls, 6 years old for a 6th birthday party has got to be the sign of the devil: 666.
While Gracie has grown up I truly thought that something was wrong with my child. I thought, "Is she supposed to be this loud? Should she be able to shatter glass with her scream? Does she ever run out of energy?" I began to think that my daughter was a nuclear powered hell machine, placed in my house to torture me with her terrorist designed sonic weaponry. You know what I learned on Friday? I learned that either the entire kindergarten class at Croninger elementary had been infiltrated by these torture devices or that Gracie is completely normal, just like every other six year old little girl.
Anyway, I digress. The party started with the systematic destruction of Grace's bedroom. Gracie has a lot of toys, I mean A LOT of toys and these six were intent on playing with all of them...all at once. The room went from clean to destroyed in less than 30 seconds. It was truly amazing. A level 5 tornado could learn a lot from my child and her friends. Not only did they get out all the toys, but all the blankets were off the bed, clothes were strewn everywhere, and I got the feeling that the structural integrity of my house would be compromised if we didn't do something to redirect these children.
Now I like to think I a pretty smart guy. I'm wrong. Really wrong. My idea of giving them something to do was to allow them to make their own mini pizzas for dinner. Have you ever seen six miniature people attempt to occupy the same space at one time? It is pretty amazing actually but it has the side effect of making every one of them try to talk at once. Did I mention they don't talk in normal voices? Indoor voices to these six was similar to staging a tractor pull inside a dumpster. It's pretty loud. Individual pizzas is a good idea for individuals. This was a micro-mob. All I needed to do is give them pitch forks and torches and we could have recreated the Frankenstein movies of the 1930's. These kids wanted to make pizza and they wanted to do it immediately and concurrently with the rest of the mob. I understand now why women at a later age go to the bathroom in groups. It's that whole mob mentality that is fostered at these small gatherings in their youth. I'm sure the only difference is the size of the creature and the new found ability to suppress the eardrum rupturing shriek that these littler versions have failed to master.
We made the pizzas up and got them all in the oven. Evidently this wasn't fast enough for one of the little heathens who picked up the bowl of cheese that remained and proceeded to stuff handfuls into her mouth. Shredded cheese began tumbling everywhere. Oh well, it's only once a year, right?
Well, the kids got their pizzas. Cheese girl sucked hers down like she was grateful the Bristol Shelter for the Homeless and Chronically Starving had finally opened their larder up. The rest managed to eat half of theirs before giving up. I guess eating was too quiet of a sport. They needed more.
Gracie wanted to have a party where they not only played: she wanted to "do something". We decided some time ago that we would play off of Gracie's love for crafts. We bought and spray painted white, six little jewelry boxes and gave one to each girl to decorate. Using stickers, and sticky backed gemstones the girls proceeded to decorate their boxes. I was pretty sure blood was going to be spilt when one girl wouldn't pass the butterfly gems fast enough for the other girls' liking (did I mention these miniature monsters will turn on and eat their own species if they do not get butterfly gems quickly enough?). We had to step in and negotiate a peace treaty there.
When we were finished with the jewelry boxes we broke out the beads. With these, we were going to make necklaces to go in our jewelry boxes. We learned after the whole sticker fiasco and decided that rather than pass the beads we would divide up all the beads into three separate bowls and then give each pair of girls a bowl to work out of. This worked out pretty well, until one of them couldn't find the right shape of and right color of bead they were looking for. This caused "the wandering" where one of the girls wandered over to the other side of the table and the bowl of one of the other pairs. Territory is very important to little girls. Stay on your side and we're all good. Come over to my side and you better bring help because there is going to be hell to pay. Angie and I stepped in and managed to avert the recreation of the Boston Massacre, only a three foot tall version.
We got through the necklace making process and moved on to the gift opening process. I set each girl down and gave them each the gift which they brought as a sacrificial offering to my daughter. I call them sacrificial offerings because most toys she gets go into that bedroom of hers never to be seen or heard from again; unless you consider that mass of plastic and cloth pile in the corner of her that I am sure will take on a life of it's own prior to our next garage sale.
This game was simple and immediately grasped by the girls. We would go around the table and each girl would bring her gift to Grace for the ceremonial opening process. This would be followed by the oooohhh and ahhhhh phase. After that, each eligible girl would share her story about how she had obtained the exact same toy sometime in their short lives (hey, I didn't make the rules of the gifting, I just observed from a purely sociological perspective). This was followed by the obligatory hug from Gracie. If a particular gift caught my daughter's attention she would throw out the cursory, "Daddy, could you open this for me?" My response was always the same, "No yet sweetie, you still have more presents to open."
Now this statement is nothing more than a feeble attempt to stave off the inevitable. I should have gotten a knife out and started hacking at the packaging because the difference between opening then and waiting to open them was the fact that later I was going to have the undivided attention of all six of the nuclear powered noise makers, all sixty of their little fingers thrust forward in an attempt to get Barbie detached from the sadomasochistic bonds that held the toy to her unbudging cardboard.
After the gifting we made the biggest mistake of our time spent with all these little darlings. Looking back I don't really feel we felt the full impact of the terror these cute little packages of hellfire could deliver, though it started to kick in towards the end.
What did we do that could possibly cause any problems? I'll tell you what we did. Most nuclear reactors run on plutonium. Not these portable weapons of mass destruction. Nope, these run on sugar. The more of it, the better. So, we followed through with birthday custom and loaded all six of the girls up with cupcakes and ice cream washed down with sickeningly sweet Hawaiian Punch. Oh yeah! It took about three minutes to see the real potential of these kids. Woohooo! I won't go in to details but I will say that I learned that there is a new level of sound that little girls can access when loaded up with sugary goodness. It is a place that involves bleeding ears and tortured neighborhood dogs.
Most of the girls woofed down all their ice cream cup and two cupcakes (they're small, right?). Cheese girl grabbed a third cupcake before I could stop her. I was forced to put myself in harm's way and take it away from her. I got a look that could curdle water, but that was about the worst of it.
After that I was given the task of removing the packaging from all the gifts. We've already talked a bit about that. In the end I just wasn't fast enough and the six of them grabbed what gifts they could, retreated to the den and fell on the presents like a pack of rabid hyenas who had just taken down a kill. See the picture to the left if you don't believe me. That is my den after the feeding.
As the party began to wind down the girls gathered for a picture on
the couch. I can joke about the party being rough and the girls being unruly but in truth the girls were very good. Gracie was a very gracious host, as we had hoped and every girl had a good time. I love having Grace's friends over and feel grateful that she has little girls that enjoy her company. I actually had a very good time and look forward to coming up with a bigger and better party in the future. I also have written down on my calendar a reminder for next year: bring your ear plugs home from work. :)Comments are welcome.
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