Only One of Us Knows How to Act Like a Mature Adult

So, it turns out I have issues and baggage and such. SHOCKER! OK, not really shocking, but birthday parties and the like seem to have the ability to knock 20 years off my life instantly. It's like the fountain of youth over here, complete with the insecurity and stupidity that comes with worrying about party lists.

The last time I had to figure out who to invite to a birthday party, I was about two feet shorter and walking around wearing green knee socks, clear jelly shoes, a pink skirt, and a purple sweatshirt. While you should be very grateful there are no photos of said fashion tragedy, I remember very clearly putting together a list of kids I wanted to invite to my birthday party and failing miserably at it. It was probably my 8th birthday, or so, and the one and only time I ever had a party. Because I screwed up the list. Like, really.

I wanted to invite all of the girls in my class. I listed them, wrote out the invitations, and realized I had one more invitation that I had names. No problem! I would just invite a boy!

WRONG.

I forgot a girl. Just one, but still. She knew I forgot her. I knew I forgot her. She was devastated. I knew she was devastated. There was no patching it or fixing it or whatever. I wasn't even smart enough to ask my parents to bail me out. I just snubbed her because it was easier.

I still feel like a jerk for it. See also: I have issues and baggage and such.

So when it came time to figure out who to invite to Alexis' first ever birthday party, I opened the closet, grabbed all that baggage, and set it down at the table beside us. I would have liked to have invited every single kid at her school, but this party is going to be at our house. As much as I would like to be super nice and avoid drama, I'd also like to still have a house next week. So, that idea was out. Then I thought we would just invite her class, but the darn kid complicated that issue by being smart enough to sometimes hang out with the class ahead of her. Really she's about 50/50 with two different groups. So, I was left with only one option--I made her decide who to invite.

"You can invite ten friends to your birthday party. Who would you like to invite?" I asked her.

Oblivious to the potential future social implications, she started rambling off a bunch of names. I quickly wrote them down. When we got to ten, I looked down at the list and went, "WOAH, WOAH, WOAH." She had named eight boys and two girls.

"Don't you ever play with any girls?" I asked. I really don't know why that mattered, it just seemed weird that a little kid would have been so lob-sided with her gender breakout.

We tweaked the list a little and then we tweaked it a little more. Then I realized I couldn't figure out where some of the kids she had listed had a mailbox at school (as in, I'm not sure one of the kids actually exists), so I kinda sorta substituted a few with kids whose boxes I was able to find. In the end, I felt like we had a pretty good list of the kids that she frequently talks about even when she's not at school.

Fast forward a few weeks and I realized I had not gotten any RSVPs. While I know I am a complete goobernugget about RSVPing for things, I still had that moment of flashing back twenty years to insecurity and drama. What if nobody showed up? OMG. FREAK OUT!

Of course, that was totally unfounded insecurity because the kid is already more popular than I could have ever hoped to be. She's oddly magical like that. People just suck about RSVPing. No big thing.

But then today came and, once again, I had to haul that luggage out of the closet. I checked the email account where I asked people to send their RSVPs AND THERE WERE THREE! I squeed. And then I wanted to punch myself in the face for being such a dork, but I'm really tired and that sounded like a lot of effort.

Thank goodness the kid is completely oblivious to all of this self-imposed drama I'm creating. Maybe by the time she has grown up enough to care what other people think, I'll have done a little growing up myself.

Finding Her Purpose

I recently wound up in a conversation with someone who is about a month from becoming a father for the first time. I feel like it's my sworn duty to make sure all soon-to-be-parents are given two valuable (and unwanted) pieces of my infinite wisdom: 1.) Don't spend good money on a good changing table because your kid is just going to cover it in poop and 2.) That thing people say about newborns not sleeping? They lie. A lot.

It's about 135134098535 times worse than anyone tells you it's going to be.

It's not that people are trying to lie, of course. It's that there just aren't words in the English language that adequately describe the level of sleep deprivation that comes with that first month or so. The closest I've ever come is to tell people that it's like you set your alarm clock for 2:00am and then hit snooze when it goes off. Instead of going back to sleep, you walk down the hall, thread a needle, watch a high school drama club reenact an episode of Seinfeld, sell a life insurance plan to a 7-year old, and then go back to bed, only to have the alarm go off again 15 minutes later. Once again, you hit snooze. You repeat the whole process. Over and over. All night long. For a month. Or longer.

I then mentioned to the soon-to-be-father that it really sucks that I apparently got a defective model of baby girl. Mine STILL doesn't sleep. I explained that she just plain doesn't need sleep, as if she's some sort of robot or something.

Somewhere along the line, his eyes got big and he started to look a little worried. "My wife is like that. She doesn't need sleep either and never has."

He was concerned that the baby might take after his wife, but some of the words he said floated out of his mouth bearing flashing lights, sirens, exclamation points, and pure joy.

His wife is a doctor.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A purpose!

A goal!

A use for that no need to sleep superpower!

When we're done paying for med school for Alexis, I'm making her buy me my very own sleeping quarters. I don't care where they are or what they look like, but the kid owes me nearly five years of good sleep.

A Win!

I spend a great deal of my time walking around confused. It's pretty much a constant state of being for me. A great deal of the blame for that state of being can be attributed to the short person who does random weird stuff daily. Like this:

For most kids, torn up knees wouldn't be a big deal, but that is Alexis' knobby knee, so THAT IS WEIRD. The kid has not destroyed a pair of pants in . . . actually, I can't remember. It's been a long time since I started praying to the Church of Gap, and since then she has outgrown stuff long before she has destroyed it. She just doesn't tear up her clothes (Exception: Target or Children's Place clothes--those last two wears and then fall to pieces at our house.).

More bizarre, those were new jeans. She had only worn them once before, so it wasn't like they should have been beat up. I asked Alexis what happened.

"I took a nap," she said.

There were about fifteen things wrong with her response. First, I had to quiz the kid to determine that her definition of "nap" and my definition of "nap" are not at all the same. My definition is superior because it involves actual sleep, but whatever. I asked more questions to figure out how you tear up both knees on a pair of pants by lying around on a cot for an hour or so. I never got an answer better than she "took a nap and fell off the cot." The thing is that her "cot" is really just a mat and sits no more than an inch off the floor. Apparently her cot was hungry and decided denim looked yummy.

The good news is that the universe heard my annoyance at the little incident. I didn't pay much for the ripped up pants because, well, I refuse to pay much for anything, which is exactly why I wound up trolling the clearance rack at Kids Gap again today.

Looky what I found!

Before you get too impressed, please note that all clearance at that Gap was an extra 40% off. Those jeans? Were $5.38. I found four pair in four different styles. I AM A SHOPPING NINJA.

Good thing, since apparently my kid's nap cot is out to get her.