Birthday Party

Sunday was Jack's birthday party, and although it was his 5th birthday, it was his first party; at least, first that wasn't entirely composed of family or our friends. This year we decided it was time for a party party, so we rented out a place called "My Gym" in Stamford, invited all his school friends and cousins, and got ready.

It's a bigger deal than you might think; at least, it was to me. I haven't really thrown a ton of parties, especially ones where the guest of honor is a 5-year-old whose happiness and excitement means just about everything. So, I went a little overboard. Multiple trips to every party store in the tri-state area (Phineas and Ferb reference, sorry) for gift bag items -- some with Jack, some on my own. Ordering the cake from Stop and Shop, and going with a full sheet because a half sheet didn't look like enough (it would have been). Getting balloons and other decorations. And then more gift bag items.

Jack and I filled the gift bags on Friday. Naturally, he wanted his gift bag right away. He'd picked out a couple of kooky things, like little bendy smiley face action figures. I'd also picked out some goofy things, like little monster finger puppets. (To my happiness, one of the kids greeted us wearing his at school the next morning; that was kind of cool.) We separated out the boy and girl bags -- boys got Spider-man tattoos, girls got Hannah Montana. I hate to stereotype, but there it is. Jack also felt that the girls should get the yellow and purple finger puppets, and the boys the green and red ones. Boys also got Transformer pencils, girls -- well, this caused me much consternation at the party store. I wanted to get Hanna Montana ones, but they didn't have them. Doesn't Hannah Montana use pencils? Then I wanted Hello Kitty, but they didn't have those either. I knew Emily would frown at the Disney Princesses, and I myself frowned at Tinkerbell (who is apparently big now with little girls, who knew? I was told in the store she had a movie out recently). Anyway, half an hour later I settled on sea creatures - fish, seahorses, that kind of thing.

We got lost on the way to the party. See, I'd never actually been there before. We were supposed to be there 15 minutes early, and in fact we arrived 5 minutes late. Last ones there. For Jack's party. It was a little embarrassing. But, Cathy ran out and we got the kids inside and playing, and I struggled in with the cake the size of a bedsheet.

The place was like a big gym (natch) with colorful mats and circles and things to climb on and big vats of plastic balls and the like. The kids loved it. Kate at first clung to Aunt Cathy, or Emily, before finally getting interested in things like the mirrors, and the plastic balls. Jack was running around with two of his best friends -- actually about 6 months older who'd started kindergarten and thus he didn't see them much -- also named Jack. I was apologizing around for being late.

Every once in a while, the madcap was running around was interrupted by structured activity from the friendly ladies who hosted it. It was kind of nice that they went out of their way to make Jack the center of attention. I realize this was obvious, but like I said, my first party. "Can you all say Happy Birthday, Jack?" "Is that the loudest you can do?" So on and so forth. At one point a lady asked Jack who his favorite superhero was. Inexplicably, no doubt because he was nervous, he said, "Superman." I gazed forlornly at the massive Spider-man cake a few feet away.

They played Tag and Musical Chairs and random stretching, dancing, running in place, dodge ball with huge, people-sized balls...it was nuts. I was exhausted watching. Strangely, none of the kids seemed to be. Kate walked up a slide and tried to slide down the carpeted ramp. That was funny. Everyone did this zipline thing --- wheeee! It was pretty cool.

At one point I looked over and Jack was in tears. It's pretty much a given that it will happen at some point at a party or crowded event. I don't know if he'd fallen down, bumped into something, was hungry -- any of those things were possible. So Emily and I tried to talk him down, and managed it more or less, and then I said, Hey, do you want to see your cake? He nodded, and I picked him up and hoisted him onto a shoulder, which never fails to produce peals of laughter. We went to look at the cake, and after that he was all right. It was a nice moment.

After about an hour or so of this insanity, it was time for cake. The woman had the kids make a line (later, she told Emily it was the most impressive, organized line she'd seen -- that's right, our kids get good learnin' at school) and they headed back for cake. I had ordered half white and half chocolate, which turned out to be a waste -- kids who got white and saw other kids with chocolate wanted chocolate too -- fortunately we had plenty. And those kids were right; the chocolate was a lot better. Blowing out the candles was time consuming -- there was a Spider-man candle, Jack letter candles, and "5" candle. Plus both I and the lady were worried she'd drop the cake as she brought it over. But they managed.

And we had just enough goodie bags.

Driving home, I finally relaxed from the whole thing. It's crazy, I was really stressing out about it. I realize he's 5 and will probably have forgotten this particular party in a few days (if not already), but I wanted it to be awesome for him, and fortunately it was. For one day it was his world, he was the center of attention, and the smiles were all worth it.