When you have children, you want to give them everything–you know, within reason. You want them to be happy. I chalk up my recent moment of insanity to this overwhelming love of my children and my obsessive need to be the cool parent. That’s the only explanation I can offer for my decision to let Sassy have another slumber party. She was given a choice for her birthday–a big party with lots of kids or a slumber party with just a few girls. You know how it goes. If your kids are given a choice in something, they will invariably choose the one thing most likely to cause you to pull your hair out. A normal, intelligent woman would have learned her lesson after the last sleepover and not even offered that as a choice but, alas, I have never been accused of being either one.
As you could see in Part 1, my confidence that this sleepover would be different waned quickly. It seems I underestimated their sheer determination and force of will. Instead of structured, guided activities, I did good just to have all the girls in the same room at the same time.
Picking up from where I left off, after finally being reassured that the girls were going to sleep, I crawled into bed around 2:30am. I set my alarm for 8am so that I could get up before the girls and get started on breakfast. Knowing how late they stayed up, I had high hopes that they would sleep in a bit. Imagine my surprise when I found out the girls had been up since 7:00. Luckily they managed to keep themselves busy with cartoons and jewelry making until I finished making pancakes, bacon and eggs. By the time they finished eating and getting dressed, we only had 2 1/2 hours to go until pick up time. The end was in sight.
As the girls took their turns in the bathroom and “helped” clean up (as helpful as a room of wound up 9 year olds can be), I made another fun discovery. While I knew Sassy, “K”, and “I” stayed up coloring on their faces, I also learned they decided to take it a step further and color the bottoms of their right feet. The soles of their feet were green from toe to heel. And this time they didn’t use the dry erase markers–they used Bingo daubers. Yeah, not quite as easy to wash off.
After this I had no choice–I started an assembly line. Each girl took her turn at the kitchen sink where we scrubbed the tattoos off her arms and the ink off her face. When their arms and faces were once again presentable, I filled a bucket with warm, soapy water and proceeded to scrub feet the best I could. Howdy commented that I looked like Jesus washing everyone’s feet. I gotta say I felt more like Kathy Bates in Misery, ready to do a little hobbling to keep everybody in line. I managed to get the vibrant green ink down to a more subdued stain. I figured the rest could be covered by socks and therefore not as likely to cause heart palpitations in the other mothers.
The girls wanted to go back outside but it was way too chilly. With nothing planned, I broke down and let them all get back on the Wii until pick up time.
By 12:10 we were down to just 1 guest.
1:30 I’m simultaneously crawling the walls and desperately fighting to keep my eyes open.
1:45 The last girl has gone home. I crawl into bed where I force Sassy to join me. I am so grateful for nap time I want to cry.
2:01 Sassy insists she’s not tired. I tell her, “Too bad. Close your eyes.”
2:03 Sassy is sound asleep. I join her soon after and we sleep for 4 hours. We wake to the beginnings of colds that we are still battling a week later and a cautionary tale about the perils of slumber parties that will last a lot longer.
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