Mister Ninja has a birthday coming up. It's a dino party. With dino digs, dino games, a dino pinata, a dino cake, you name it. Of course his father promised all this, his father being a big vision person has left the details to me and I've been snarling at my family all this month to prepare for this dino extravaganza, but that's not what this post is about. My only saving grace is that Dearest has agreed to hire three teenaged girls from our church who love children to help out. Why? You'll see!
My Mister Ninja is a sensitive little boy. He saves his pennies to help the animals affected by oil spills, or to buy toys for children who don't have any. He gives me hugs and makes sure to kiss me every night and when I drop him off at school, he won't turn his back on me, but instead walks backwards into the class waving because he doesn't want me to feel sad. He is very big on making sure other people don't feel sad (except his brother, although he is the first to kiss his brother's boo boos-the ones he didn't inflict). This ties in to his birthday party.
He is our first, he is our learning curve. This is really his first birthday party where he wanted to invite a bunch of friends from school. Last year it was 2 or 3. This year it's a smorgasboard. So he invites about 10. I can deal, we have a lot of room, the kids from school are pretty well behaved, they fall into that school pattern and their teachers have done an excellent job. Then of course he wants to invite his buddies not from school, which are 7. These are all parents we're close with, so I can deal. They don't fall into the school pattern, but I can yell at those kids as if they were my own. Awesome!
Then Mister Ninja comes up to us, "I want to invite X, Y and Z because they're in my class and I don't want them to feel sad or left out." Now maybe he is conning us and pulling our "Awww, look how sweet my boy is!" leg but I think given that this is a consistent streak, it could very well be genuine. On the other hand, he is a Scorpio, so it could be a sham.
So I write his teacher to cross reference the list. There are FOUR more kids, plus their parents should they choose to stay, and why would they? If they're smarter than us, they'll run for the local Starbucks, there's three within 5 minutes of here. And you know, I've been to several parties this summer with at least that many kids, but the word here is summer and with that brings good weather and the great outdoors. Not so practical at the end of October! All I keep thinking is "This is going to be very very good, or very bad." As I curse myself for not planning to have all August babies. That's it! No more sex January til July!
Now I know the veteran parents are having a good belly laugh at my expense. Keep it small, only invite his class, only invite a kid per year. But how can I resist my son's Mother Theresa request? He is truly friends with these kids, though, he's truly friends with everyone, he'd invite the whole school if I let him, plus teachers, the police officer he met a couple days ago and our neighbour and her Bichon Frise that snorts when happy. So how do I nurture this caretaking personality trait without having my house become Grand Central Station? The birthday party is done, invites are taken care of, food will be ordered, basement excavated to accomodate madness factory, but in the future we need to focus all this excess love towards people in manageable doses. On the plus side, his loving personality has blessed him with a lot of friends and will hopefully help us mould him into a socially caring and involved person in the future. I will be focusing on that when I'm tearing my hair out come birthday party day.
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