Well, it wasn’t as bad as her brother’s last party.
When he was eight we agreed to a sleepover – four of his friends from 6pm until 11am the following day, a night which felt like a lifetime and featured a lot of marauding and stampeding with loud weaponry, and very little sleeping.
My partner said it was like Lord of the Flies without the ritual slaughter, although we did consider it at about one-thirty in the morning.
Hannah chose to spend two hours at the local indoor play centre.
Lemon squeezy.
Just copious bottles of water (tap water, from home, after paying to get into the place we were loathe to put a single extra penny into their coffers) and only three lots of tears to dry up.
1 – Guest lost her bracelet in the ball pool. Partner spent fifteen minutes scrabbling around among hundreds of sticky plastic balls. He complained they kept piling back on top of him, but he found the thing. Plastic beads on elastic, well worth the trouble.
2 – Son hurt his knee playing football. Quick cuddle.
3 – Another guest bumped her head in some incomprehensible way which was obviously very traumatic. Longer cuddle, followed by accompanied trip to trampoline.
Back to our place for tea, Pass the Parcel and Musical Statues. In the year that’s passed since her last birthday, Hannah and her friends seem to have got the hang of losing, so this was the least problematic party games session so far.
At least school’s taught them something – other than rolling their eyes and using the word “And?” as a weapon.
