This weekend was Alexa’s birthday party. Not just any birthday party, but a sleepover birthday party. Now, to my knowledge, this is the first of its kind for our darling girl and we’ve always been reluctant to allow it for a couple of reasons. One, our house isn’t big enough. For a single friend to come over, sure there’s enough room for that, but multiple friends is pushing it. Two, it’s a LOT of planning. What do we feed them? What do we entertain them with? Who is allergic to something? On and on and on. Three, its costs are equivalent to purchasing a nice handbag (and we all know how much my mom and I adore handbags).
So we started discussing numbers the invite and settled on 10. Good even number. The day of the party we had 9 RSVP’ed, which one of those girls being a maybe. I of course was even more thrilled with 8. Mom, Laura, and me chaperoned this shindig, and the ratio of 3 to 1 was really working for us. But that was soon to change.
Now, if I wasn’t invited to a birthday party that everyone else in my class was invited to, I would be upset and of course, share this disappointment with my mom. And my mom, being the wonderful mom she is, would take me shopping or to a movie and I would forget all about the party. Well since Alexa had a limited number of girls she could invite, not everyone got an invitation. I mean come on, we can’t invite the entire 5th grade class, or even all the girls in her homeroom.
So here we are, 830, which is 2 hours into the party and a mom calls. I’ll pause while you gasp the way we did. She actually called my mom and asked if she could bring her child to the party. Now, this child has been to our house before, it was nothing short of a miracle that we didn’t take her home before midnight. Her manners lack, her attitude sucks, she feels entitled to everything that isn’t hers, and she’s a whirlwind of emotions. Needless to say we were all standing behind mom doing the “NO DON’T DO IT” hand motions. But mom doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, so she said “sure, bring her over.” Crap.
I honestly think the child didn’t realize she wasn’t invited. I think she thought she just “missed her invitation” in the mail.
So that definitely made the party interesting. It is amazing how one individual can change the entire mood of the group. Everyone was bouncing along just nicely, but you throw in the wild card, and everyone goes batcrapcrazy. I have to say, I was very proud of the other girls at the party. They all knew before hand that this child wasn’t invited, but no one pointed that out to her.
As I observed this situation, I saw what my mom was talking about my whole life. The actions of one individual can either help or hinder a situation. For my sister, I’m glad the other girls were able to be sweet and caring people towards this child. I saw tolerance, and acceptance, and gentle spirits. So even though it was a party, I think the girls learned a very valuable lesson too. If they can learn that one simple truth now, life down the road will be so much easier for them. And that’s all because one child has a gutsy mom, and I have a compassionate one.
Yay for “Team Player” Tuesday (b/c that’s totally what happened)! Do something nice for someone!
Much love!
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