Oh, the agony of being five

So this weekend was Mr. Social Butterfly's weekend of cake, ponies and stripper poles. God, it must be tough to be five and have a packed social schedule.

Monkey Man is kind of unique in that he seems to run in a pretty big social circle. If his classroom was a five-year-old version of The Breakfast Club, he'd be the character that didn't exist in the movie but that hung out with everyone and everyone loved. He's friends with the cool kids, the brainy kids, the shy kids, the obnoxious kids, and everyone in between. And it doesn't necessarily matter if they're boys or girls, they all seem to love Monkey Man.

This becomes problematic beginning every September when the flood of birthday parties starts. Take the 20 kids in his class and imagine investing money in presents for most of them...add in his friends in the class next door and then any non-school friends and what you have, my friends, is another reason why I totally need to buy stock in Target and Toys R Us. Between toys, cards, gift bags, and driving all over the city, it's like a major investment of money and time.

But ya know, I'm just happy that Monkey Man has friends that like him and want to spend time with him. That's something that neither Joey or I had growing up - Joey because he lived in the middle of nowhere and other than a kid that lived across the road and his cousins that he spent every day after school with at Granny's house, he didn't have many friends - and me because I was an "oops" and by the time I came along every kid in the neighborhood for the most part was in high school so playmates were pretty limited. So in a way, I guess, I am living vicariously through Monkey Man and embracing his social butterflydom in a lot of ways.

Yesterday morning's party was for his buddy Hugh at the local state park. We'd been to a party there a few weeks ago and they do a great job entertaining the kids with some snakes, frogs, and turtles that they keep in the nature center, and after a brisk hike through the woods they have a craft activity and then cake. The craft activity was painting their own walking sticks with washable paint, which was a good thing because when you take 15 kids with big sticks and about 10 buckets of paint, disaster is sure to ensue.

Last night was a party for Peyton at the same Little Gym where we had Monkey Man's party a few months ago. I figured Monkey Man might be a little tired, but he had taken a two-hour nap that afternoon so he seemed fine...until...he spilled a little water in the Pimp Mobile and got a little upset. So we walked into the Gym and I turned to Monkey Man and told him to take off his socks and shoes so that he could get into the play area before the party started, and you can guess what happened next. Yup, he completely broke down into a puddle of sobs and gasps. Twenty minutes later after apologizing for being "mean" (which apparently is what I was when I told him to get his socks and shoes off) he finally stopped hyperventilating and started playing.

Today's party for Chris was right in the middle of naptime. Anyone who has known me since Monkey Man came along knows that I'm pretty much a naptime and bedtime Nazi. I've kind of slacked off in the past six months, mostly because I was so consumed with just surviving myself that I figured maybe it was time to give up being such a hardass and just wing it a little more. So I went into today fairly prepared that Monkey Man would probably be okay but exhausted tonight.

As the party went on, I noticed through the window of the parent waiting room that he had dissolved into tears. I went in there only to find that he was upset because they had like 20 little beach balls in there and he didn't have a YELLOW one. Oh, for the love of God, this kid's obsession with yellow is really all-consuming at times. A yellow ball was procured and the crying stopped.

Then, 30 minutes later, more crying. This time he had been hit in the eye with a ball (how ironic) and this time it was a little harder to get him to calm down.

Needless to say, we weren't even out of the parking lot good before we heard snoring in the backseat.

So, to recap our findings from the weekend:

Take 1 already tired five-year-old...
Add in about 45 of his friends...
Make them go to three parties in about 30 hours' time...
Add a little sugar...
Deny them naps...

Oh yeah. My normally stoic kid turned into a puddle of mush. Bedtime couldn't have come early enough tonight.