may the 4th be with you

the boy is four today. i was feeling a tad weepy about the whole thing yesterday but then last night he woke up literally eleven times between 2 and 5am because, gnats. (okay, in his defense, 3 of those 11 times were for a shrieking/tweeting smoke alarm because when the F else do smoke alarms go off except between 2 and 5am?! after that he was on HIGH ALERT for any and all miniscule winged insects.) anyway. i'm feeling a little better about things today because clearly he is still my giant baby. but, four, people. f-o-u-r. they just grow up so fast. ;)

we had a party for him on Saturday. i was a bit worried about how it would all turn out. the logistics were a little nuts because work and life are crazy for both DM and me, and on top of that, it was a joint birthday party, which brought in a whole host of new etiquette and party planning challenges. do you invite all the kids in the preschool class? i know that's the polite thing to do, but there are 24 of them, and some of them punch my kid in the face on a regular basis. then add in friends and family for BOTH kids? that's like, a guest list equal to the population of delaware, and our house isn't that big. even with our seriously pared down roster, we ended up with about thirty people, thirteen of which were kids. that's a lot of kids. it is a small miracle that our swimming pool survived free of feces.

then there was this weird "do you have to buy a present for the kid you've never met before in your life?" issue... where's ann landers when i need her?

also, we don't really know our co-hosts all that well. i mean, they're great. but we've really only hung out together twice and one of those times colby puked all over their house. and now we're planning a party together. so it was interesting. i had to walk a fine line between fulfilling my control freak psycho pinterest party planning dreams, and causing the other mom to call 911 and recommend me for an involuntary psychiatric hold. "you're going to BUY cupcakes? from SAFEWAY? with GREEN SPRINKLES????... um... okay... that sounds perfect!" quick! someone help me hack into safeway's customer database and change the order. green sprinkles, god forbid! ;)

it was actually really good for me. i should always have a co-host to counteract my crazy. of course it's all relative. when they came over in the morning the other mom started in with the "oh i'm such a bad mom, you did all this stuff and i just went to Costco!" then she told me that she's not crafty, but she's a cook, so whenever she hosts at her place she feels obligated to cook for three days prior. (and i believe her. the one time they had us over she made delectable black bean burgers from scratch, and hand-hewn quinoa guacamole with a mortar and pestle.) i assured her that cooking healthy and delicious comestibles is a much more useful skill than being able to craft light sabers from various food stuffs and items from the seasonal aisle at target.

anyway, i "only" stayed up until 2am getting things ready. and all-in-all our joint venture was a great success! except for that part at 1am when DM took a break between two television shows to critique my pretzel light sabers: "the light part needs to be longer."

poor DM. he wasn't able to make it to the party. he mysteriously disappeared, and was later found at the bottom of a shark-infested body of water, dipped in chocolate, with a pretzel light saber lodged in his aorta ;)

then my dear husband called me Lord Business all morning because, in my persistent irrationality, i wanted the decorations and party favors to remain intact at least until the guests arrived. silly me. what was i thinking? for those of you who aren't familiar with the Lego Movie, "Lord Business" is will farell's character and - spoiler alert - at the end you find out he's a dad who won't let his kid play with his legos:

The Man Upstairs: You know the rules, this isn't a toy!
Finn: Um... it kind of is.
The Man Upstairs: No, actually it's a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system.
Finn: But we bought it at the toy store.
The Man Upstairs: We did, but the way I'm using it makes it an adult thing.
Finn: The box for this one said "Ages 8 to 14"!
The Man Upstairs: That's a suggestion. They have to put that on there.

i have to admit, i closely identify with will farell's character ;)

i also briefly questioned my choice of party favors when there was an all out pool-noodle light saber civil war, but thankfully there were no casualties.

mommy had way too much fun making pool noodle light sabers ;)

 

oh yeah, and, it was a pool party. but it was raining. like real, legitimate rain. in san diego. in august. turns out four-year-olds could not care less! as my grandma says, "you're not sugar, you won't melt."

as usual, grandma was right :)

co-host: should we have adult beverages?
me: was that a rhetorical question?

oh yeah. then. today. jack wanted to bring the avengers birthday card he got from his grandpa in for show-and-tell. but, being my son, he is very aware of the school's strict superhero censorship, and did not want to violate preschool protocol. his teacher's comment yesterday that captain America is "scary" only served to underline his concern. so he suggested that we bring in the birthday card, but cover up the scary parts. a clever compromise, i thought.

happy birthday to my boy. may the force be with you, always, except when aiming light-saber-y things at your little sister's dome.