Saturday, August 29, 2009

8 years old part 2, The Sleepover

The day has come for the much dreaded anticipated sleepover party. The girls and I spent the day running errands, shopping, baking and cleaning. Paul also did his fair share of grocery shopping and cleaning. By 5:00 pm the house was shiny clean, the decorations were hung, the crafts were prepared and the cupcakes were baked. As the guests started to arrive, they immediately went into hyper drive. Something I always forget (until the next party that is) is how very LOUD pre-pre-teen girls can be. There is probably a scientific formula which explains it, my guess is something like (girl + girl) * (volume)4

Once the last girl had arrived I set up an assembly line for them to make their own pizzas, which they found far more hilarious than pizza making normally is. I won't repeat the conversations I overheard during making, baking and eating those pizzas but lets just say I have at least 40 new gray hairs on my head.

Following pizza was more running/screaming/jumping/screaming/chasing kittens/screaming. At one point I heard sirens and was sure that the police and fire department were on their way to rescue the poor children being murdered in my backyard, but thankfully they had somewhere else to go. In deference to my poor ears, we quickly proceeded to the friendship bracelet making. This went fairly well, although it took far longer than I expected and I had to provide a LOT more help than I had expected. Whatever, it was fun, except for Fiona's minor breakdown because "everyone else is finished before me!"

Next came cupcakes (thanks Sharon for the awesome vegan recipe!) and presents. Saskia got three Webkinz. Which of course produced another Fiona breakdown because, "Saskia has more Webkinz than me and hers are cuter and I want one!". Note to self, if I am ever crazy brave enough to host a sleep-over party again MAKE FIONA TAKE A NAP BEFORE THE PARTY.

After presents I made popcorn ON THE STOVE! (note, I did not think this was remotely possible) and marshmallow goo to make popcorn balls. 3 of the girls helped me form the balls (note 2, butter lotion is VERY funny when you are 8) and all of them chowed down. As and aside, my grandma used to make popcorn balls whenever we went to visit her and I lurved them. Now, not so much. But the memory was a good one.

Now the girls are settled down watching "Hotel for Dogs". Well, 4 of them are, 2 of them are rampaging through the bedrooms upstairs but I'm too tired to go see what kind of mayhem they are causing. When the movie is over, we still have make-up bags to decorate and make-overs to do on each other, as well as a pajama fashion show to host. Should be fun, if I don't collapse. Thank God for beer... root beer that is. I'm on my third. SUGAR!!!!

Part 3 of the birthday saga to continue if after I survive the night.

Friday, August 21, 2009

8 years old, part 1

Saskia turned eight this week. Because most of her friends are out of town right now, her party has been scheduled for next weekend. Consequently her actual birthday was pretty low-key.

She started the day by waking us all at 7:30am. This is a kid who will happily sleep until 10 or 11 if we let her. So we all trudged downstairs at this horrific hour to watch her tear into her presents. She got:

An American Girl Doll (Rebecca)
Books
Earrings
A Taylor Swift CD
Clothes
A Jonas Brother's Backpack and Lunch bag
Clothes for her doll
A gift card to Rhapsody to buy music for her MP3 player
A kitten named Zack

The kitten and the doll were the big hits of the day, while the books, clothes and school supplies didn't even register except as mild disappointments (I'm sure she was thinking, "cheep ass mom, I would have gotten these anyway for school, why did you give them to me as presents?!"). The fact of the matter was, after plopping down a shit-load of money on her doll and the kitten, I wasn't prepared to buy much more that wasn't going to serve a dual purpose. Sorry hun, you should have been born in May if you didn't want to get clothes for your birthday...

After opening presents she and I went out to IHOP for breakfast. She'd been looking forward to the free ice cream since her sister went there on her birthday. Sure enough, by 8:30 am the staff was coming out singing and presenting her with a huge sunday, which she gobbled down appropriately.

The rest of the day was spent playing with her new stuff and generally lounging about unproductively. Oh, I forgot to mention that Fiona presented Saskia with a trip to Build a Bear (which mommy paid for of course) as a present. We went on Saturday and of course I ended up buying both girls a bear and outfit... for a total of $60! Damn, I had no idea that BaB was so friggin expensive! Guess there was a good reason why we never went there before. Anywho, now-a-days BaB has it's own website where you can register and play with your bears (someone feeling the Webkinz heat?) so Saskia spent a lot of time on there as well.

We didn't get around to actually having cake until about 9pm. Since Fiona is now on a dairy free diet we made two cakes, and can I say my dairy free cake kicked serious ass. It was awesome. From now on that will be the only cake I make.

All in all, it was a decent day, although I felt very guilty for not spending more time with the birthday girl or doing something special for her. Hopefully I can make that up when I have her friends over for their very first sleep-over party!, and all the fun stuff that goes with that.