parenting for introverts

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Annual Pre-Birthday Fret Fest, Activate! 

Oh, hi. It is That Time of Year when I begin to fret about Carla’s birthday party. 

Didn’t we already take care of this, you may be wondering? And yes, yes, I thought I had taken care of it way back in April.  Well. The best laid plans, etc. 

To keep you updated: The theme is still Beach, the party is still at our house. It is still ostensibly a pool party. Will we be able to use the pool or will there be thunderstorms? Who’s to say, Internet. Who’s to say. Also, there is no lifeguard because “securing a lifeguard” in April does not mean securing a lifeguard. It means that your need for a lifeguard goes into some sort of system – but not a system accessible to all the people who work at the lifeguard staffing place – and then you have to call back a month in advance of your event and then thrice a week after that to be told, every time, “Call back on [date two or seven days hence] and we should definitely know whether we have a lifeguard for your event.”

I prefer to send out invitations to an event no fewer than four weeks in advance. That deadline flew past, because I was not going to invite umpteen children to my house without a lifeguard on hand. I know my limits. Finally, two weeks before the party, I convinced Carla to cull her list down to five and sent out the invitations. These kids are all good and experienced swimmers, and my husband and I are going to watch them every second. My in-laws will be there to do things that require leaving the pool area – showing kids to the bathroom, getting waters, answering the door for the food delivery. We are not having any parents stay, in part because that’s a whole additional level of stress but also in part because the more people on hand, the less confident I am that anyone will be watching the swimmers. 

Listen. I understand, fully, that the lifeguard staffing place has a lot of factors to consider. First, summer JUST started, and it’s prime lifeguard season, and I’m sure they’ve been scrambling to find enough high school and college kids to staff all their clients’ needs. Plus, I am guessing that their primary business comes from country clubs and community centers and camps, who all need multiple lifeguards for multiple days a week, and I completely see how it would be a priority to staff those bigger clients before my tiny one-time party. 

And yet… if you cannot promise a lifeguard for an event, perhaps do not promise a lifeguard for an event?!

I pulled this meme from somewhere on the internet and I’m sorry about the typo.

The most maddening thing about the lifeguard issue is that when I finally called them, a week before the party, and told them I no longer needed a lifeguard because I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty (I left a message and I promise I was as nice as possible over the phone; it’s not the fault of the people who do the scheduling), they called me back later that day and left a message that said, “We have a lifeguard for you, in case you change your mind.” ARGH. 

Other people probably would have taken the lifeguard staffing person’s promise of “Oh, I’m SURE we’ll have someone for you.” (followed, always, by, “But call back next Monday just to confirm”) as good enough, but I couldn’t do it. 

MOVING ON.

You may have noticed back there a few vents ago that I referenced food delivery. And lo, we are no longer having a taco party. My husband convinced me and Carla that getting takeout from a local restaurant would be better and easier. (And more expensive, probably? But I didn’t do any sort of price comparison because I don’t want to know.) 

Carla also vacillated WILDLY about what kind of dessert to serve. We began, back in April, with beachy cupcakes. Then she decided she didn’t want cupcakes, she wanted some sort of frozen treat. 

Carla did vacillate back to cupcakes and now I’m making watermelon cupcakes.

I couldn’t put together exactly the right LOOK she wanted (I get the feeling her entire vision was based around Ken from the Barbie movie and I could not get that vibe together), so we settled on flamingoes. (There are a ton of cute flamingo options out there, if you are looking for a flamingo theme.) But then she decided she wanted flip flops as part of the theme, too, and then watermelons… and there seem to be plenty of options available if you want to throw a watermelon-themed party or a flip-flop-themed party, but nothing that effortlessly already combines watermelons and flip flops and flamingoes and beach. So now the whole thing feels very chaotic to me. I realize this is a Me Problem, and none of the kids will care, and it will be cute, and the theme will be, loosely, BEACH as intended, and it will be fine and I should waste NO MORE TIME on thinking about this at all. 

Should, of course, being the operative word.

Okay. Food and theme sorted. Now I am in the throes of What If Our Pool Party Becomes an Indoor Party? anxiety, because – as you already Well Know if you’ve read this blog for any length of time – a party at my house is my nightmare. 

Every year since Carla was, I think, three, I have outsourced the party part of her birthday to someone else: a paint-your-own-painting place or an indoor playground or a petting zoo or a nature hike. This is important to me for two very important-to-me reasons: 1. I don’t have to have a bunch of people in my home which I find stressful on cleanliness/food prep/introvert levels, and 2. SOMEONE ELSE TAKES CARE OF THE ENTERTAINMENT. I do not know how to entertain people! I am not entertaining! The only reason I agreed to having a party at my home is because the pool is the entertainment. If we remove the pool from the equation, we have nothing. NOTHING. 

Taking a step back, I think – I really do – that the kids would be okay if they all just hung out in Carla’s room and chatted and did whatever it is tweens do when they are together. But my FEAR is that they will be bored and teenagery and they will have a terrible time and blame Carla for it and she won’t have any friends. 

Yes, yes, ths is catastrophic thinking at its finest (speaking of, of course I have spent many many hours worrying about drowning and other pool related injuries, don’t think I haven’t), I have taken The Threat of the Indoor Party way too far; it will be fine. Even if they are a little bored, it will be fine. Maybe the weather will even be swimmable! Who knows! 

Despite knowing that it will be fine, here is where I am: in a mild state of panic (much milder, I swear, than the all-caps multi-thousands of words might imply), and trying to soothe my panic with rational thoughts and also trying to plan non-boring and fun and cool tweenage things to do just in case they get all bored and mopey and why-did-I-come-herey and I-want-to-go-homey. 

Just to be 100% clear: I FULLY REALIZE I am overthinking things. That is sort of my brand, the overthinking. I promise you that I KNOW I can simply plop the kids down in front of the TV and they will be fine. BUT. It helps me to have A Contingency Plan, and so that’s what I’m trying to assemble. 

Help me? Please?

Here are my ideas so far:

1. A Treasure Hunt. Always a good option. Always fun for me to put together, even if they are stressful and tie my brain in knots. In my experience, group treasure hunts aren’t that great – there’s always one kid who reads really fast and takes over and the other kids are left to trail behind. But I could divide the kids into teams of two and they could compete with one another; in fact, I panic bought a bunch of clearance items from Michael’s that I could use as door prizes. But treasure hunts are a LOT of work and they always take far less time for the kids to complete than they take me to put together. 

2. Truth or Dare. The kids seem to love to play truth or dare, as I did when I was their age. Because I am (tada!) an overanxious parent, I would probably come up with some pre-planned truths and dares and print them on slips of paper for the kids to choose. That way, we could hopefully avoid destructive/dangerous dares and awkward/hurtful truths. (Like “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?” and “what superpower would you want?” instead of “what’s your most embarrassing moment?” or “who do you have a crush on?”) (By the way, this is probably a worthwhile topic for another day: the intervention of parents in their kids’ lives in order to prevent them from experiencing awkwardness/weirdness/discomfort. I have wildly conflicted feeling about that, and also have a child who attends a school where keeping kids comfortable is the norm, for all the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. Which means all her friends have that as their norm, which makes me feel like I need to uphold it when I am hosting them. Again. Different, MUCH THORNIER topic.)

3. Beach Themed Scattergories. I can make a Scattergories scoring card in Canva and print it out for everyone. This might keep them busy for a while, and I could give prizes to the winners of each round.

4. Who Am I?/Celebrity. This one is fun, but it strikes me as kind of difficult because I don’t know which celebs the kids know. It’s not like they are all sitting around watching Full House and Saved by the Bell and a handful of the exact same shows everyone else is watching the way I did as a kid. TSwift and their math teacher are pretty much the only people I can think of that they are all guaranteed to recognize. (They also all probably know our current and former Presidents, but since we all come from different spots on the political spectrum, I don’t think that’s a good option here.)

5. You vs the Birthday Girl? Originally, I thought it might be fun to do something like, “who knows the birthday girl best?” but I would want to be careful not to weight it too heavily in favor of Carla’s best friend. So I’m thinking of a game that awards points for things they can compare, like, “has the same number of letters in her name” or “has the same color eyes” or “has bigger feet” or “is wearing earrings” or things along those lines??? 

6. Nail Polish Spin the Bottle. I saw this on a website somewhere and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure how it works? I think the gist is, you line up ten bottles of nail polish, then spin a bottle of clear polish in the middle, and then you have to paint one toe or fingernail the color you land on. This requires a lot of nail polish… but I could get some from the dollar store. My biggest concern with this game is that the kids will get nail polish on the carpet. 

7. Guess That Tune. We no longer have an Alexa, so we can’t play Song Quiz. But my husband could probably set something up and the kids could keep track of who wins. I don’t know though – seems like a lot of work for a small payoff. 

8. Hide the Candy. I could totally buy a bunch of small, wrapped candy (like tootsie rolls, hork) and hide those all over the house. I feel like maybe Elisabeth did this for a party in the near-recent past, and I recall reading it and feeling astounded by its genius and its simplicity.

9. A Craft. The craft store (yes, I did go to both Michael’s AND the craft store, what of it) had some little flamingo suncatcher crafts on clearance: buy one get TWO free, and that was a theme appropriate deal I could not pass up. It is quite young for the kids – you just paint a plastic thing – but it’s On Theme and it could be something to do. A LAST RESORT, if you will. If we don’t do this craft during the party, I will pop the packages into the kids’ favor bags.

10. Poke a Prize. Carla mentioned this idea briefly – once – awhile ago, and I kind of mumbled and changed the subject, because it is TOO much work, and it also requires some sort of competition so the kids can pick a prize. I did it once in 2020, and it was glorious, and I plan to never do it again.

Okay, here is where you come in. Do any of these games sound reasonable? (We are not going to discuss whether my need for A Contingency Plan is reasonable.) Do any of them sound like instant party sinkers? Do you have any other Awesome Tween Appropriate Games or Activities in your back pocket? Is having gifties/prizes a good idea (to incentivize participation) or a terrible idea? (They will all also get identical treat bags at the end of the party.) I was kind of planning on making sure each kid gets one prize, but maybe that’s… infantilizing? Eleven-year-olds are VERY aware of being babied, based on my limited experience. And, I mean, a pencil case is fun but is your life going to be ruined if you don’t get one?

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More Angsting about Playdates

Here I am, all easy breezy, having scheduled TWO spring break playdates like it ain’t no thing. When it turns out I am not done stressing about playdates, not even a little bit. Here are some of my specific (and let’s face it, pretty deranged) worries:

Being Too Lax or, Conversely, Too Strict: We have house rules, and I think it’s reasonable that kids who visit our house should abide by those rules, just as I’d expect Carla to abide by the rules of any house she visits. But when people who aren’t my family are in my house, I start to second guess our rules. Is it weirdly fastidious to ask that people take off their shoes? Am I helicoptering if I tell the friend that there’s no dropping things/throwing things/jumping from the balcony? Am I being a psychopathic germaphobe/germaphobic psychopath if I expect kids to wash their hands when they come into the house (which is what every member of my immediate family does upon entering our home, every time)? I don’t want kids playing in my bedroom or my office, I don’t want kids jumping or standing on the furniture, we don’t eat anywhere besides the kitchen. These things feel reasonable in my day-to-day life, but when I collect all these rules into a tidy bunch to present to another person, they feel like A Lot. And how do you convey your expectations? I don’t want to be condescending or overly rigid by announcing a thousand rules up front, but I also don’t want a kid to “break” a rule she doesn’t know and then feel like she’s being scolded for it. And also, what about rules that you feel like you shouldn’t have to say out loud, and also are hard to anticipate because they seem so obvious, like “don’t throw food” or “don’t paint on things using the carpet as a dropcloth”? 

Logistics: We now live out of town, and I realize that it’s not super easy to get here. One recent playdate, we brought the kid home with us from school and then drove her home. Another recent playdate, I picked the kid up from her house, her parent came and got her from mine. I think I have established logistics upfront for one of our two already-scheduled playdates – we are going to be in the area of the kid’s house, so when we arranged the day, I said we would pick her up and suggested that her parent come and get her after the playdate is over. But the other kid lives QUITE far away. We can drop her off, and I already let her parent know that… but we haven’t figured out the details of how the kid is getting to my house… I really don’t want to offer to go get her, because it will be a long drive and we are already going to drop her off. But… is it fair to ask her parents to endure the long drive to bring her here? I could suggest we meet somewhere in the middle, I guess. Is that weird?

Duration: When Carla was little, playdates were pretty typically two or three hours long. These days, they seem to last a bit longer, which is fine… but how long is too long? Are they going to hate each other if they spend more than three hours together? And what about sleepovers, which are necessarily much longer? Carla has had ONE sleepover, and when her mom asked what time she should pick her up, and I suggested eleven the next morning, the mom expressed surprise. “Let me know if I should come earlier,” she said ominously, as though the kids would be at each other’s throats. (Eleven worked out fine, but that feels like beginner’s luck????) At this age, is a meal always involved? For instance, I think our playdates are beginning after lunch… but does that mean I need to prepare dinner? (I am already prepared to prepare dinner, I am just wondering if that’s normal or if I’m overthinking the whole thing.) (Hahahahaha, ME?!?!, overthink anything?!?!?!)

Reciprocity Signals: Carla doesn’t get invited to a whole lot of playdates. I don’t think she’s been to a single one this year. Yet she and her friends seem to PLAN a lot of playdates at school. And everyone we’ve invited for a playdate at our house has said yes. So… is this just a case of the other families are busy and/or hate playdates even more than I do and/or they just haven’t gotten around to it and/or they have multiple children so fitting playdates in and among the thousand extracurricular activities they must be juggling is simply impossible? Or am I missing a subtle signal that Carla is not welcome at their homes or not well liked by other kids or or or?????

My mom reminds me that when I was a kid, NONE OF THIS was an issue. She said the word “playdate” was not even part of our vocabulary. I would just say, “Can So-and-So come over?” and that was that. We’d come over and entertain ourselves. But… how? I am guessing – hoping – some of this stress comes from lack of practice. In any event, the ball is already picking up speed as it bumbles down the hill.

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?