birthday parties

I didn't get a chance to write about last weekend's birthday party. Actually, there were two--on Saturday, it was the McDonald's one I described earlier, and on Sunday, it was a party for two-year-old S. The experiences were vastly different.

Saturday's party was two hours long and in retrospect, j did really quite well for the first hour and a half. I guess I should've left earlier before he hit his breaking point, but I didn't want to be rude, leaving before otherj (birthday boy) opened his presents (which he never did... they were bagged up and whisked away... yet another thing I didn't know about kids' birthday parties these days). Anyway, otherj wasn't too friendly with j when we arrived, which is understandable since they don't know each other too well. j doesn't seem to care or notice, which is fine. There was the indoor playground which was a little nervewracking since about every 20 minutes another kid would be crying inside and all the adults would look up at the colored plastic tunnels that stretched to the ceiling, wondering where the wailing was coming from, whose kid it was and how we were going to get him out of there since no one could fit in the tunnels. j had his own moment when someone bopped him on the head inside the tunnel, but he was fine and calmed down quickly. Then, near the end, he was apparently kicking otherj, I think because--and here comes the mother justification--otherj wasn't paying much attention to him. Then, at the end, otherj handed out goodie bags, and j refused his vehemently (No! No!) for some reason. Then j had a meltdown and I had to pick him up to leave. I didn't know too many people there, except for otherj's mom and another mom. Some of the women seemed perfectly nice, but I didn't really have the time to find out since I was scanning the playground for j the entire time. Some other moms, however, were not so nice about his behavior.

What gets me most about being in these difficult situations is The Look. The Look that says in one moment, Why can't you control your kid, you don't discipline him enough, get him the hell outta here. I know it's all about me, this sadness about the The Look. j doesn't notice it, and so I know I shouldn't care. But I do, because I have this amazingly beautiful, brilliant, precocious little guy and I just want other people to know it and recognize it too.

Which brings me to Sunday, when we were among friends at the second birthday party. We were also at their home, not in public, which helped... P could take j away from the action for a bit when he needed to calm down. But j did great helping the littler ones with play (ok, so he was demanding that they play by his rules, but he was doing well). I'm sure being in a home helped, but I think it may have been being among friends, who, I now realize, have never given me The Look. So chalk it up to their being calmer around my crazy kid, or to the fact that I was calmer because as a family we all just felt so comfortable and loved there. It was a great night.