Theme Parties, Event Managers

Those are normal words you can use these days when you consider Kiddie Birthday Parties. Apparently. Its fine, I can live with it. Thankfully, on Sunday was a theme party, not involving an event manager. Being a-social and all, we rarely get to go to parties of this kind, but this time, it was unavoidable. Meaning the hosts live next door so we had to be invited, of course.

The theme was Pirates (shudder!). I suppose its fun for a kid. There were swords in golden and purple, with scabbards and everything. A treasure chest, gold & silver coin chocolates, a pinata with chocolates, little chocolates all over the house as treasure, a pirate ship cake with a pink wafer sail, yadayadayada.Oh yeah, these swell eye-patches too, for all the kids.

I, being of course, totally clueless about such matters, was not of much help to the host-mamma or host-elder-sis-in-charge-of-games. I hung around, looking less bored than I was, mopped up some apple juice some kid spilled, and tried very hard to convince a particularly annoyingly screechy kid to lower the volume a tad. And when the boys charged at me with their swords saying they would attack and kill me, I told them I would fight back with a hug. They would poke my (fat) tummy with the sword, & I would smother them with a hug. They were quite cute though, despite such weird behaviour from what looked suspiciously like an aunty, they talked to me again. I stuck to my theme of hugs for the entire evening. I was surely not going to indulge in sword-fights with kids, that would go against my everything.

My husband supported me very well by disappearing to the gym for most of the time of the party; returning all sweaty and scaring the kids in the hallway (there was a relay race for pirate treasure going on at that time; my daughter and I were sitting on a parapet wall & watching & wincing), and then speaking on the phone for a continuous hour. Then he asks me (as if I have sole rights on such things), would you do a pirate theme party for our child? So I say, no, of course not. How about a Princess, he says. No, of course not, and he knows it too. He shakes his head, and says, oh the poor child, will curse her parents so much. Well, let her.

What are pirates & princesses anyway? What do they even mean? Do the kids understand what the words even mean? The only princess I know is that one in Jean Sasson's books. Should I talk to my three year old about that, now? I did ask her what a Pirate was. She confidently told me that he is a person who looks for treasure. The treasure is gold, she said. What is all this, really? Why don't I have a theme birthday party on Human Rights or Global Warming?

I have lots of battles to fight with mine child in the future. Already today I was under fire because I dressed her in (what I thought was) these really cute little pair of green shorts & a black t-shirt; and Simmie (school friend age approx. four) was in a pink skirt with twinkly things on & a white t-shirt that had ties here and there. Much upset at her amma was my child. And this is a constant tussle these days. If I say skirt, she says pants, if I say pants, she says frocks... And I cannot get myself, with my own hands, to make her wear shiny twinkly fussy lacy things to school!!