Toddler Party

My friend Stacy is one brave mama. For her son’s 3rd birthday, she decided to invite 20+ kids and have the celebration at her house complete with games, lunches for each kid, cake, cupcakes, and munchies for the adults. Two hours, 15 kids, mounds of screaming, and a bump or two on a little head, everyone left the party exhausted.

In my lifetime I have seen some raging parties; whether it was the annual Margaritaville party at the Kappa Sigma house on the Boise State campus, the Up In Smoke Tour night off bash, scores of punk and riotgrrl after show parties, or my college roommate Mary’s 21st birthday celebration where I experienced a drink called “the atom bomb”, I have been to some serious parties. None of the above compare an iota to a toddler party.

For those who don’t have kids, or have older kids and have forgotten what toddler parenting was like, imagine yourself as a zoo keeper, and today it’s your turn to watch over the chimpanzees. Now let’s say that next door to the monkey house was the posh room that the zoo has their big donor events in. Let’s say that in preparation for a big donor event, fully stocked portable bars were brought in, and when the monkeys smelled the sweet aroma of wine, they broke loose got into the donor room and drank the bars clean. After that, the monkeys proceed to ransack the zoo, and finally end up in the zoo gun room where they are now destructive, drunk, and fully armed. The only ones left to put a halt to their path of wanton carnage is you and five other zoo keepers who are scared shitless. This is similar to what it’s like to be in a house with a bunch of toddlers hopped up on sugar and psyched, because it’s almost time to sing “Happy Birthday”.

Toddlers are the closest thing to the Freudian id that I have ever experienced. They run and jump around singing, yelling, and doing anything, but shutting up and sitting down. They have no regard for the property or sanity of others grabbing whatever suits their fancy, especially everything you tell them not to touch. Stacy did the party in a Bob the Builder theme and had two blow up construction cones with a blow up sign in the middle to keep kids off the stairwell. Despite all the parents’ attempts to keep the inflatable “caution” sign in place, the toddlers were drawn to it like Paris Hilton to the paparazzi.

Toddlers are also never satisfied. Stacy’s parents were there supervising games for the kids, and gave out little plastic medals with ribbons. Rachael participated in each game, and got her medals, but it wasn’t enough, she wanted more. She insisted on playing both of the games several times, then after collecting a plethora of medals and plastic, gold coins stole some of the other kids’ awards. Funny, I didn’t teach my kid to be a greedy thief, it just sort of happened that way. I was feeling inadequate about my parenting skills when I noticed a little blonde girl going through the goody bags of some of the other kids and taking the toys she found appealing despite her parents’ lecture about respecting the property of others. Her mother showed her that she had her own bag of toys, but the little blonde wanted what everyone else had. What a bunch of greedy, little bastards!

At the end of the party, with Stacy’s house thoroughly trashed, you would think that the toddlers, with their bellies full of goodies and cake, would have walked away happy, but that’s something a rational person would do, and toddlers are not rational. You would have thought some of these kids were being sent to their death with the way they carried on as their parents attempted to get them out of the house and into the car. Rachael left the house just fine, but was yelling at me all the way home. From the time we pulled out of Stacy’s cul-de-sac until nearly the time we entered our neighborhood Rachael made demands, screamed at the top of her lungs, and told me to “shut it up, Mommy” making me wonder if I was seriously mentally ill when I decided to have a child. This isn’t want I had imagined. I thought it was all about rocking a sweet little girl to sleep, then looking in on her with Jeff by my side as she slept peacefully. None of those fucking books ever said anything about the drunken, armed monkey behavior or the verbal abuse.

By the time we arrived home I had actually began to fear the impending December 2nd date that would be Rachael’s 3rd birthday. I’d like to say that I will have a less chaotic commemoration of my daughter’s 3rd year of life, but I’d also like to say that my ass is small, and neither is true. In two short months, I will host my own toddler party, and all I have to say is, G-d help us all.