Tonight marks the night my daughter Rebekah will be celebrating her 11th birthday. It is a little late, but scheduling circumstances outside of my control necessitated this weekend be the weekend we do this.
What that means to be is that tonight I will be flooded with young girls eating, playing, screaming, eating, screaming and screaming. I already know that it is going to be loud. And that I am going to get eaten out of house and home. And that I am going to get very little sleep. I am prepared for that. I think what I am not prepared for, and what I truly do not know how to prepare for, is the physical impact this will have on me and my wife.
Of course, knowing me, I am going to throw myself headlong into the festivities. I always do. And I will probably end up setting up games or something fun for the kids and see to it that they stay up too late. That just seems to me to be something that I am drawn to. So I am rather looking forward to having some fun tonight.
I guess I am just not looking forward to the noise, the food bill, the noise and the noise. But with a house full of girls, should I really expect anything less?
Spending time with your kids is important. When you have five of them like I do you realize that it is not only important but sometimes difficult to do in a fashion that speaks the each at his/her level. My children range in age from 3 to 12 so what one may like the others may not.
One of the things that my wife and I try to do from time to time is allow for parent/child time that takes into account the childs age. To foster this we sometimes schedule time with the child(ren) for whom the time spent will be most appreciated and enjoyed.
Last night we did that with the two older girls. Sarah and Rebekah have been putting in a lot of time and work into the home since Sandi has been sick. They are working probably a little harder than kids their age should and they have needed a break almost as long as I have. So to give them a little time to cut loose Sandi and I decided that after the three younger kids went to bed we would have Sarah and Rebekah join us for a board game in the living room.
Sarah suggested Scrabble and, since Scrabble can have a definite end to it, I was all for it. We set the board up, picked out tiles and picked who was to go first. We started playing and as is common with me I busted out the Fritos, Cheetos and Funyuns.
We played, we ate, we learned. We were have a grand old time. And then it happened. 10:30 PM. This is the time that Sandi and I usually have to start yelling at our two oldest kids to stop talking, turn their lights out, be quiet, stop whispering, stop laughing, stop yelling and all that other stuff that is totally not conducive to a couple sleeping kids.
What made it even funnier was that as my daughters entered into their goofy stage, the imaginations and creativity began to show brighter and brighter. The icing on the cake was when they started trying to help mom user her “Y”. Some of the combinated words that the kids came up were:
- tuftedYkit
- funkYpanty
- greensYhim
- weenYbeefy
In addition to these beauties, there was much laughter, rolling on the ground, snorting and all sorts of other goodness that even got mom into the groove. While sitting there looking at the madness of three tired females rolling all over the place laughing their bootYis off I realized something: I was at a home brewed slumper party. Crikey!
Not wanting to feel too left out I decided to throw my own little bit into the mix. No, it was not a wordYword. Instead it was a Lord of the Rings spin (which Sarah was doing plenty of as well). My contribution to this little shindig: Foghoggin Baggins
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that my new nickname is now Foghoggin Baggins.