it's whose party?

PC and Sahara enjoy the simple pleasures of the kiddie pool

We set a socializing record last week--two birthday parties and two baby showers over a period of four days. Overall, it was great to see our friends, and to celebrate the arrival of or mark the occasion of the arrival of the little ones. One of the showers was a surprise shower at a pool on a 95 degree day, so there was that nice bonus of taking PC into the water, which, if you've seen the pictures we posted a couple weeks back, is about as close to nirvana he has yet discovered.

The birthday party scene for kids is somewhat confusing and unsettling. As I talked with my friend as his daughter's third birthday party approached, a sense of dread passed over him when he mentioned the expectations brought on by parties for kids that age. I had heard about "goodie bags"--every kid attending the party walks away with a nice little stash of gifts. At a party last month, PC came back with two necklaces, a bracelet, and a matching shirt and shorts outfit. This is so kind, so generous, but I couldn't help but think, whose party was this anyway? Goodie bags are apparently the expectation now. And more. D sends his girl to a nice preschool, and the kids' parents there do things like rent those awesome "moonwalks," hire live Barbies to come over (that would freak me out) and the like. I said, does this mean you're going to hire someone to blow up balloons and twist them into the shape of animals? No, he joked, because he knew how to do that. And he would juggle, too. No kidding.

You can see where all of this is going--these parties are incredible expenses, there's a lot of fuss and posturing, and there seems to be a good deal of effort to displace the attention from the birthday child and make sure every kid feels like its her birthday.

Fortunately D's party and the other one we went to were not overdone parental competitions. At one, we ate chicken nuggets, ran through the sprinkler, and played in a cardboard box decorated like a castle. The kids had a freakin' blast. The goodie bag was tastefully done--color crayons and coloring book, a fruit rollup, and an organic granola bar. At the other, no goodie bag at all. Some pizza, a couple beers, a kiddie pool, and pleasant adult conversation. Granted, that kid was only one, and this makes a difference--there's much less need to entertain the kids at that age.

But our friend circle tends to lean toward lefty-types skeptical of commercial culture, and I'm left wondering if we'll be able to resist the pressure once the kids get older. It's strange to imagine a child's birthday party as something that has to be tolerated, but from what I've heard, some of these parties would make me want to stay with PC at home.