Monday, May 19, 2008

Where a kid can be a kid

Andrew's "birthweek" concluded on Saturday with a party at Chuck E. Cheese. I have mixed feelings on the CEC birthday idea. One the one hand, it can be fun—and potentially a lot cheaper—to plan and execute a kid's party on your own. On the other hand, after we handed our check to Andre our party liaison, our responsibilities were complete. No cleaning up, no putting the house back together, no looking for spots where red frosting is actively seeking its way into the very fibers of the upholstery or carpet. That's a huge benefit.

The party itself went well. This was the first year where it was a true kids' party. In years past, we have planned what would probably best be described as family parties with some friends in attendance. This time, the kids actually outnumbered the adults 13 to 10. For the most part, Andrew really enjoyed himself. As part of the party package, we received TONS of tokens—we still have 100 left—so he got a pocketful of tokens to spend however he wanted. His favorite games were air hockey with dad and a "game" called Tower of Power, where you try to hit a button at just the right time to earn lots of tickets (but you win some tickets every time). That's the kind of game that drives me nuts normally, because you blow through your tokens at about 15 seconds per token, but when you have a seemingly endless supply, it gives the kids a chance to build up a long, unbroken string of tickets. That also led to Andrew's self-declared favorite part of the whole party, which was feeding his tickets into the Ticket Muncher machine. He hasn't even opened the prizes he bought with his tickets, but he loved to watch that machine munch his tickets.

The only drama of the day came when it was time to sing Happy Birthday and blow out the candles. The way CEC does it is they have multiple parties going on at parallel tables, and they do one giant song and have all the birthday VIPs blow out their candles at the same time. Problem is, Andrew was still working on his pizza and was not ready to blow out his candles yet. He just about lost it, but did manage to recover. He's just not a kid who likes to be the center of attention (unlike his little sister, who LOVES it).

I'm thinking next year we may do a smaller-scale party with just a few friends. As Katherine and I were talking about it, we were hit with the strange realization that we don't know who those friends will be. Some of the kids at the party—like Sam Maurer, C.J. Woodruff and Ian Reyes—Andrew has known since they were babies, and they've been going to school together for years. But most of those friends live an hour away and everyone is headed to different schools for Kindergarten this fall, so Andrew will have to make some new friends. It's weird to think that this party (Kaleb Colwell's party next month) will be sort of a "last hurrah" for a lot of these friends, who I know Andrew will miss seeing three times a week.

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