party time

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Yet Again Overthinking My Kid’s Birthday Party

“I don’t think we need a theme this year, do we?”

So mused my husband, when he and I were discussing plans for our daughter’s thirteenth birthday party. This is one of those times when I wonder if he’s ever met me. Do we know each other? Of course we need a theme. I love a theme. A theme is a balm to my control enthusiast soul. I have no power over whether people attend a party, or like the food, or enjoy themselves, but I can fucking well ensure that the décor et al revolves around a central motif.

I think I’ve already told you that my daughter expressed enthusiasm for a 90s theme. Which I suggested because her party will involve two of the nineties-est things I can think of: roller skating and a slumber party.

(Yes, yes, I know. Once again, despite my many, many qualms about sleepovers, I have caved to my daughter’s desire for a slumber party. I have no justification for this behavior.)

My recompense is that I get to lean fully into the 90s theme.

Ambiance

I think we will go super simple with the décor, and get a complete set of party supplies. Maybe do some little 90s-themed hanging swirls.

Carla is working on a 90s playlist. I am impressed by her existing repertoire of 90s music! She already knows songs from the Spice Girls, No Doubt, The Offspring, Smash Mouth, and Alanis Morissette, and there are so many fun songs we can add to the mix.

Party Favors

Kids of Carla’s age may be, I suspect, Over It when it comes to gift bags. My preference has usually been to get a single item that we give away to each partygoer – like a book or an anklet or a beach towel. I think there’s a higher chance they will use those things, while a bunch of cheap plastic stuff will end up in the garbage or cluttering up the kids’ houses (and annoying their parents).

This year, I have allowed nostalgia to override my better judgement. Carla found these delightfully tacky boombox favor boxes, and we are going to fill them with an assortment of things I remember fondly from my childhood: mini troll dolls, Koosh balls, jelly bracelets, Warheads, and ring pops.  Carla also wanted to include these key rings, and why not.

My husband suggested getting every kid a Beanie Baby, which is a super fun idea. I let that plan fizzle when I realized I would have to get everyone the exact same Beanie Baby, or figure out which specific variety of Beanie Baby to get and instantly felt overwhelmed. Plus, the ones being sold today are different from the ones we had in the 90s… and I didn’t want to deal with finding “authentic/vintage” versions.

Food

Dinner will be pizza. Carla has requested lemon meringues, with cupcakes for people who don’t like meringues. (I found these darling on-theme cupcake wrappers and toppers.)

I do think that we’ll need some additional food. Listen. I could 100% buy a few bags of chips and some candy and popcorn and let the kids have at it. Probably that is what I will do.

But my let’s-make-things-more-complicated heart wants to – you guessed it – make things more complicated. This mainly derives from my feeling that cheese pizza is not an adequate dinner for a growing child. Did I eat cheese pizza at many a birthday party, let alone for many Friday night dinners, as a kid? Oh yes, so many times. Do I have any qualms whatsoever when my kid goes to a birthday party and the dinner is pizza? Not at all. Is the only reason I can’t say the same for many, many meals as an adult ONLY because I no longer eat plain cheese pizza and prefer pizza to include pepperoni? Very much yes.

Still. Allow me to fantasize about my ideal slumber party menu, okay? And we’ll agree that this won’t happen in real life, and I will lean in to the chips and popcorn thing.

My (fantasy) criteria are: 1) is something Carla likes, 2) includes protein, 3) probably won’t stain my couch/carpet, 4) is cute and/or fun, 5) is nut and dairy free.

Here are the things that fit those criteria:

If I didn’t feel quite as bad about over-sugaring the kids / wasn’t worried about ruining my furniture/house / had attendees who could all eat dairy, I would totally do a hot chocolate bar and some s’mores dip and maybe some sheet pan nachos.

We will also be feeding these teens breakfast. Breakfast is not my area of expertise, so my vote is for donuts. Why, yes, that does directly contradict all my high-and-mighty posturing about “cheese pizza not being good enough.” So perhaps we should make sheet pan pancakes and some scrambled eggs with a side of fruit instead.

Entertainment

While I am still thinking wistfully about the idea of a Taskmaster party, I have resigned myself to reserving that for a future date. After all, the kids will get to roller skate and then (hopefully, weather permitting) swim, and they can always watch movies. Nonetheless, I am of course stressing about how to keep these teens entertained while in my home. I would love to have a few ideas in my pocket, just in case they get bored. I think we can all agree: bored teens pose a danger to themselves and others.

Carla specifically wants to play a game called either “pass the parcel” or “saran ball game.” My understanding of this game is that we choose a variety of tiny prizes (lip balms, stickers, scrunchies, candy) and wrap each prize in a bunch of saran wrap. Then each kid has a set amount of time to free a prize without ripping the saran wrap before passing the parcel to the next kid. The big challenge, I think, will be choosing prizes that are simultaneously fun enough to keep the kids occupied, silly enough that someone who doesn’t get a prize doesn’t feel too upset, and inexpensive enough that I don’t need to resort to selling feet pictures to pay for the party. In the “pass the parcel” version of this game, or so Carla informs me, there is a Big Prize in the very center of the layers of wrapping; she does not want that, because it feels unfair. But it also seems as though there’s no guarantee that a person will get a prize during their turn anyway, so I’m not sure how “fair” the game is. In any case, it might be fun to have a couple of slightly higher-end prizes in the sticker/scrunchie mix – perhaps a World’s Smallest Care Bear or Slinky??? Or maybe a gift card to an ice cream shop or Five Below?

I also think that having a photo scavenger hunt could be potentially fun. (This is a leftover from my Taskmaster fantasizing.)  But maybe that can be a spur-of-the-moment option that I can offer if the kids are bored by everything else. Don’t worry; I will overthink it into oblivion just in case.

As I mentioned earlier, movies are a great, classic option for keeping the kids busy, too. I do tend to fret about WHICH movies they will want to watch. Carla’s friends occupy both ends of the “I’ve seen everything up and including Squid Games” and “I still mainly watch Disney movies” spectrum, so I feel a little uneasy about leaving the choice to them. Carla and I had a little chat about it, and she thinks that she can guide the options a bit, so that no one is going to be forced into watching, like, Midsommar or, I don’t know, Eyes Wide Shut.

Since I am, as stated, obsessed with a theme, I of course would vote for 90s classics. Clueless and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Of course, most of the 90s classics I think of as fun and harmless have aged poorly, I’m looking at you Austin Powers.

Here is the point at which you kindly, gently overlook my latest birthday party related bout of insanity, and instead tell me:

  • What are the best slumber party foods?
  • Which 90s songs MUST go on the playlist?
  • Which 90s movies MUST the teens watch?
  • What are the best slumber party games?
  • What am I forgetting, besides the undeniable fact that the teens will do whatever they want and I really have no say at all?
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Five for Friday

Perhaps you are wondering, what the hell am I doing?! Well, apparently I am participating in NaBloPoMo, although not here; I’m writing a post every day in November over on my book blog. And apparently I am also still posting in this space too (though not every day!), because I am… on the other extreme of the posting pendulum?? out of my gourd??? an asshole???? I don’t know. I don’t expect you to read any of it and I’m sorry. I have a problem.  

A warning. I made these amazing and delicious sugar-free, gluten-free – and yet legit delicious! I swear! although Carla and my husband disagree! – brownies again for Halloween. When I made them the first time, I bought a package of super expensive Medjool dates at my grocery store (the sweetness of the brownies comes from dates, spoiler alert) (I don’t even LIKE dates, but these brownies are good) and my only complaint about the brownies was that it is a pain in the rear to pit all the dates. But! THIS TIME I spotted a bag of Dole pitted dates that was, like, HALF the price of the fancy dates, so I bought that to save both money and time, am a genius. To make the brownies, you pulse chocolate and baking soda in a food processor, add dates, then add eggs and vanilla and pour everything into a pan and bake. Easy peasy, delicious. Halfway through making the brownies, my food processor started smoking and kind of stopped working. This is called foreshadowing. I have clearly not watched enough horror movies, so I just thought it was my food processor’s time. I’ve had that thing since 2008, and it’s lived a long and productive life. Time for a new one. I scraped the date mixture into my blender, which had no trouble turning everything into a nice uniform-but-very-sticky goo, poured the batter into the pan, and baked. The brownies were delicious and soft and I frosted them by pouring some chocolate chips on top while they were still warm, and then spreading the melty chips all over the top. My husband gamely agreed to try one, and bit into it… and right into a DATE PIT. So. This very elaborate and somewhat boring story is in service of warning you to still inspect all of the dates, even if they are supposedly PITTED. I suppose this is the baking equivalent of “never trust a blinker.” Never trust a pitted fruit claim, folks, you heard it here first.

My orchid is reblooming! I got this orchid as a gift way back in 2017. It has rebloomed a few times since then but for the first time in my memory, it has THREE blooms instead of one. I think it’s very happy in its new spot on my mantel. 

My kid attended her first b’nai mitzvah of the season last week. When I first posted that she has six to attend this year, a couple of people had questions. Suz wanted to know, “Does that mean six different dresses and six different gifts?” and Eli wondered, “I want to know what one wears to a b’nai Mitzvah! And what kind of gifts is one supposed to give?” Well, first of all, I am a Mean Mom and I only allowed Carla to get two dresses. (And please understand that “only” is in giant scare quotes because that is PLENTY OF DRESSES, she is very spoiled.) (And also, it’s really FOUR dresses, because I bought her two appropriate-for-synagogue dresses as well, that she can wear to the ceremonies.) What girls wear to the party portion of b’nai mitzvah in our area are short fancy dresses and sneakers. Yes. Together. It is my understanding that the dresses are of the same style as those girls are wearing to homecoming. They are very short, sometimes very form fitting. They do not, in my opinion, seem at all appropriate for a middle schooler. And yet they are The Trend. All of us seventh grade moms have been fretting together about the dresses and how uncomfortable they make us, and reassuring ourselves and one another that it’s The Trend and it’s Just A Dress etc. Much as moms have done for time immemorial, I’m sure. For gifts, we are doing cold, hard cash. It is apparently standard to give money in multiples of 18, which is a significant number in some Jewish traditions. 

I made aloo gobi last week, and it was delicious. (It was not, my husband pointed out, much like aloo gobi one would get in a restaurant, but it was still flavorful and tasty and warming.) In the comments, Jenny asked: “That Aloo Gobi looks good- but I looked at the recipe and it has some unusual ingredients- mango powder? Coriander leaves? Do you have those things or are you making a substitution?” I did not, in fact, have mango powder on hand. But I do NOW; I went to the South Asian grocery store and they had multiple varieties of mango powder so I bought some. I also got some Kashmiri red chili powder. I did not, however, get fenugreek leaves, mistakenly believing (and failing to look up until later) that the leaves are the same thing in my container of ground fenugreek. Oh no. The ground fenugreek is fenugreek seeds, and has a totally different flavor from the leaves. Oh well. Next time. The rest of the ingredients – including coriander leaves (cilantro) – I had on hand, and now I can make aloo gobi any old time I want. 

My CPAP machine comes with an app and gives me a daily score. This is very effective for me, because I like to get an A. Right now, I have a B, which is apparently due to the number of times I got up at night and removed my mask. As Allison noted, “I still don’t really understand them giving you a CPAP when I thought your problem was more insomnia-based, but I hope it helps!” I also still don’t really understand it either, Allison. And now I’m getting a B on my CPAP score because I get up too many times in the night and remove my mask. Am I not supposed to pee, CPAP App???? Or what if my cat is scratching the bench at the end of the bed? Am I supposed to just let him shred the upholstery???? And if my legs are twitching uncontrollably, am I just supposed to lie there and NOT SLEEP? Doubtful; you’d probably dock me points for being awake, too. Oh yes, look: hours of sleep do in fact earn points, and I got a score of 58 out of 70 for wearing my mask “only” 5.7 hours. FUN FUN FUN. 

    Okay, that’s all I have today. If you prefer to go check out today’s nonsense over at the book blog, I will see you there. (This is probably Way Too Much Suzanne, and I get that.)