Astonishing!

This weekend I hosted my first-ever birthday party for one of my children. Dylan turned seven and “more than anything else in the whole wide world,” he wanted to have a Star Wars birthday party. Challenge number one was whittling down his guest list to something in the neighborhood of reasonable. We did a little compromising, and he helped me write out invitations. Good writing practice with a very motivated child. Mom was happy, boy was happy, world was good.

Since this was my first time at hosting, I was very uncertain about how long activities would take. I was terrified of running out things to keep 12 boys busy. Turns out that cupcake decorating and eating takes a mere three minutes. On the other hand, painting a three-foot wooden dowel to look like a light saber can last upwards of 30 minutes, especially because everyone has opinions and commentary on how to properly make Jedi weapons. Pinatas take about 15 minutes; eating (inhaling) lunch takes about 5 minutes. So how did it last two hours? I don’t know…it just did. There were a lot of good guy/bad guy battles in the backyard. Not exactly an activity I had planned, but then they seemed really happy with it.

The hit of the afternoon was a guest appearance by a close friend dressed as a bad guy from the Empire. It wasn’t a storm trooper, so I’m really uncertain what he’d be called. If you’d like to advance my knowledge of the Empire’s fighting force, leave a comment and tell me what the black storm troopers are called. And it wasn’t Vader–I am smart enough for that one. One lucky day my son will think I’m a cool, Star Wars savvy mom. The next, he will be a teenager, and that moment will be lost forever. Anyway, they had picture-taking and question-asking and battle-posing. It was pretty funny to hear them trying to decide if it was real or pretend. There was an in-depth discussion of how a real bad guy would land his spaceship near our house. Tricky things for 7-year-olds.

The real risk of the afternoon was arming all the little padawans with wooden light sabers. We had a brief training segment, in which everyone repeated loudly that light sabers only touch light sabers and not other kids or adults or my trees or our little sister or the swings or the house. Near the end of the party we had to revise the training a bit, since it’s okay to hit the giant Death Star pinata with a light saber, too.

So, we made it through two hours of hearty partying with second-graders. To my deep relief, no one was hit with a stick/light saber. No one had any eyes poked out. My trees did not get whacked to death. Anya escaped completely unscathed. And I might be a cool mom. Astonishing!

Tags: birthday, dylan, imagination