I can handle anything. Really. I've seen and done quite a few icky things including being a med tech at the local county jail, providing medical help after the tornado here in town, and being a professional horse poop shoveller several times. It's doesn't bother me at all. There are only two days a year that I'm truly uncomfortable. Picture day and my kids birthday parties.
Picture day is the one day every year that I stress about what we wear. Are our outfits timeless enough or will we get tired of looking at them in twenty years? I have to hope that my kids, who are otherwise pretty smiley kids, will smile and pose and listen to commands on someones schedule. The less they listen, the more I yell, and the more they threaten to break into tears. Not a good combination. They have to stay clean on the way there, and usually on the way home because the clothes they get pictures taken in are not every day clothes. God forbid I have to nurse the baby in the middle of the session, because we are on someone else's time schedule. This is why I have to put faith in our local photographer and just hope for the best. The more I try to control the situation the more it deteriorates. Just try to relax and go with the flow.
Birthday parties are a completely different matter. I'm not entirely sure why I had three kids since I dislike hosting birthday parties for my kids the way some people disdain smelly homeless people, paying taxes, or receiving a mail order fruit cake. It's the pressure of providing an experience that shows how much you care about your kid, that other people enjoy too. It's too much. I stress over the location, the theme, the cake, the favors (oh GOSH how I stress over the favors), and especially the RSVP system which never seems to work. It's an exercise in gracious hosting that I have never mastered because you can see the tension on my face. I have faced down angry felons with less tension and trepidation. I'm not southern, and while everyone IS welcome at our house, it's hard for me to make people FEEL welcome at our house.
So this year my daughter had her 2nd birthday party. I had planned a wonderful barn yard themed party at the local petting zoo. I invited all our friends and their kids. I made a "dirt cake" with banana pudding and crushed oreos. I had matching table cloths, napkins and cups. I found barn animal hand puppets for favors that I wrapped in cow print fabric squares and tied with twine, and stored in a galvanized tub. It was all perfect.
Now, it hadn't rained at our place in weeks. A drought of epic proportions. A drought the likes of which we hadn't seen in 30 years or more the news said. Such a bad drought that most states have been declared disaster areas so that we can afford to buy hay for our livestock. And I schedule the party, outdoors, without a second thought. The difficulty of the day was compounded by an early trip to the vets office with a couple of our horses.But then Hurricane Issac made it to Missouri and brought with it 5 inches of rain in 12 hours or so. And everything is a wet sloppy mess outside.
The entire party is rained out, and the next thing I know, 15 kids and their parents are at my house with no activity other than out toys. I think the kids all had a wonderful time. Really, when kids have any toys that aren't their own and somewhere to play they're usually happy campers. Add in a huge cake and all you can drink pouch juice and it really is a party.
Now I know my daughter wont even remember her birthday party today, but I will. My husband always says that I'm good at making it work no matter the situation, but it doesn't always feel that way to me. Hopefully, with any luck at all, my kids will look at the pictures from today and be happy that we threw them a party at all. They won't care about the rain, or the cake, or even my tension filled face, but that in the pictures, they are smiling, and so are all their friends. And thats why I do it all.
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