Sunday, December 7, 2014

What I Learned From Our First Sleep Over

This weekend, our Micah Bear turned 8. Third grade was my first sleepover I ever attended. I remember it vividly...it was an experience I will never forget, mostly because it was horrible, held in a vile house that I never went back to, the parents were out of control, and had I had access to a cell phone or their house phone and had the parents been sober, I would have left and went home. So naturally, I wanted my son to have the best possible sleep over for his birthday present.

He loves to be surprised, and had been asking to have a sleep over for a while, so we decided to throw all caution to the wind and just plan it. Because we are insane, and having 6 boys over for the night, and 4 of them spend the night, plus get your own 4 children taken care of, and then taking all 8 children aged 10 and under to church the next morning sounds like a grand idea. 

So here's some things I learned as I went. 
  • You will clean your entire house for no reason, other than to impress parents who drop their kids off. The kids could care less, and are going to just mess up your house, but no one wants to drop their kid off at your house when your couch is full of laundry and your toddler's train tracks take up the whole living room.
  • You will have too much pizza. Your eight year old typically eats 4 slices of pizza. You plan on feeding 5 of your own people, plus 6 other roughly the same aged and sized children, you do the math, and you figure on 6 pizzas. You decide, since you have a 50% off coupon, to just go ahead and get 7, just in case, because that would be the most horrible party ever- not enough pizza?! And then, each munchkin is so excited because of the party and it being their first sleepover too, that they all only eat 1 slice and ask to start the games already. 
  • You will plan 3 games to fit into a 30 minute period, and only do 1. Because you are actually playing games with a herd of elephants, one game gets played, and then the rest of the time is spent explaining things, herding them, focusing them, and then defaulting to your husband coordinating a Fruit Ninja tournament on the Xbox360, while you nurse the baby.
    Marshallow Shooters will be the best. idea. ever.
  • You will make a cake that the kids won't want to eat. The kids had so many snacks earlier in the night that when it came time to open presents and have cake, not a single one wanted a piece because they were so full from earlier. Even when it's covered in candy, they will want to watch the movie instead. So the next night, you'll be forced to eat the chocolate cake staring you in the face.
    Seriously. Staring at me. All homemade and whatnot.
  • They will stay up LATE... Even with all the games, the running, the jumping, the slicing of the fruit on the Xbox...at 11:34 pm you'll be reminding them that they need to stop farting on each other in sleeping bags, stop whisperyelling "shut up, Miss Jay's coming," and go to sleep since I am waking them up at 7:30 for church....
  • ...and they will wake up WAY too early. Even sleeping in a sound proof, pitch black play room will prove no match to adolescents who know that video games have been bought and opened as presents, and lay neglectfully unplayed in the living room, just a mere 20 feet away. So naturally, by 6:14 am, we all need to be out of bed.
  • Your husband just can't hang. He will be awesome all night long, Games, doling out pizza slices, monitoring the cheese puff intake...but come 6:14 am, it will be you making cereal bowls, getting kids dressed between Skylanders rounds, making sure tooth brushes are used, and making your husband coffee that he will forget to drink, out of exhaustion. Never mind that 2 of your own children slept in your bed last night since it was quiet and across the house from the herd of elephants. And never mind that you nursed the baby three times between midnight and sun up, or that your toddler peed on you in the middle of the night and you changed it all since you felt bad waking said hubby up to help. Later, you will have 2 pieces of the uneaten cake, since hubby isn't there to appreciate it, since he passed out at 9:20 pm in the toddler bed. The aftermath of a sleep over is ugly. The uneaten cake was *literally* staring at me.
  • You'll do a victory dance mentally when all 8 children are taken to church that morning, and you overhear that it was the "best sleepover ever."
  • You'll tear up when your child says thank you for an awesome birthday, and asks if we can do it again next year.
    Thanks for making me a mom, Bear.
Thank you Lord that sleep overs will be a yearly thing...and thank you Lord for my reason to celebrate....