She is only in the first grade and she goes to parties on Friday night. Thankfully she is at an age that I don't feel the need to smell her breath.

Over the last few days I have been processing what I recently went through.  I shouldn't dread one of my daughter's birthdays but the party that comes attached has the potential to totally suck.  Technically the party didn't suck, I paid good money to make sure it didn't suck (for Laurel).  But, holy shit am I glad that's over.

Days prior to the party I had this odd anxiety...dreading the 90 minutes that would be Laurel's best time ever (until the next party.)  The cake was picked up (because you know that I didn't make it), the favors wrapped, pizza ordered, juice boxes and extra snacks ready to go.  I couldn't shake this ridiculous feeling.  I call it ridiculous because I did very little at the party.  Laurel was at a party the night before hers.  (She is only in the first grade and she goes to parties on Friday night.  Thankfully she is at an age that I don't feel the need to smell her breath.)  This mom DID everything.  She had little creative stations set up--dancing room to One Direction, face painting, crafts, make your own pizza and/or party hats.  It was kind of amazing but chaotic at the same time.  I could only take three minutes and then got the hell out of there.

So as the Wangs drive over to the gymnastics center, I silently tell myself that the party is going to be fine.  I am trying to rationalize why I am going through these thoughts.  I stop rationalizing when my lips start silently moving and I think Ching caught a glimpse.

I get there and I feel pretty good.  Our room is ready and Laurel's 22 besties are filing into the gym ready to act like the next Aly Raisman.  All the parents greet me and I make sure that I introduce myself to anyone that I don't know.  Everyone seems genuinely nice, but they all give me this look like, "Okay, I greeted you and now I am going to leave...without my kid.  I don't feel guilty at all. This is 90 minutes of freedom!"

The hour of activity flies by and then, there is the refreshment portion...the longest 30 minutes of my life.  There are 24 kids (including Laurel and Rachel) screaming for pizza, water, juice boxes, fruit salad, and cake.  I have more juice boxes than water...I run out of fruit salad (don't these kids normally get fruit?) and that stupid cupcake cake didn't come apart as easily as I thought.  I got home and I had frosting on my ear.  Ching and I didn't plan that the 2 of us vs. the 24 of them wasn't a good match.  Thankfully someone helped us..so it was 3 vs. 24. Yeah, that seems about right.

Of course there was a bump that happened and this one girl cried.  Honestly, I wasn't very sympathetic.  During pizza, she kept screaming about boobies and I didn't know if I was out of bounds telling her to shut the hell up.  The bump on her head did it for me.  Laurel has such a myriad of friends...they range from polite and nice to absolutely shitty. I am always amazed when the nicest parents produced some of the crappiest offspring.  I do make the assumption that if I like the parent, I will like the kid.  I have been proven wrong many a time.

Laurel came home with such an obscene haul of gifts.  I knew I should have tried harder to convince her to gather a donation to a children's hospital rather than all of these gifts.  I would say I will try harder next year but Laurel isn't having another party until 2017.