The start of birthday party season is upon us. For years now I have dreaded these days, when the schoolmate b-day invitations begin to roll in. I was always miffed when Charlie Brown would moan about the fact that he was never invited to a party - personally that would be the sweetest thing ever. I recognize a part of growing up is attending birthday parties, eating cake, being merry, blah blah blah, but when there are 20+ kids in a class and party politics require that everyone be invited to every party it can be a drain on the family time social calendar and on the wallet. Secondarily, or maybe this is my primary fear, is that this means I will have to now invite non-family members to the Bear's 4th birthday extravaganza in March and that those folks that do not know the Bear (or us) very well or at all will arrive with gifts of an undesirable kind (dolls that end in the letter Z or princesses from a company starting with a D - for example...you know the stuff all girls are supposed to be into). Can you write "No Shitty, Slutty Gifts please" in the invite? I am weighing my options.
The party tomorrow is from 2-3:30 (meaning that the household must be football fans as the playoffs start after 4pm - I already like these people) and at their home, which is nice. For the gift, we decided on the Squiqqles book I reviewed here, along with a snazzy 24 pack of watercolour pencils and the 1st Gustafer Yellowgold DVD (read my interview with Morgan). I couldn't help myself with the Gustafer purchase 'cause #1 it helps out the band and #2 it is just so cool and unique...which is more than one can say about those Z's and D's. I wanted to package Justin Robert's "Meltdown" and Francis England's "Fascinating Creatures" discs with the Squiqqles Book as the gift but I thought of it too late to order from the artists themselves and I simply refuse to pay $18 for a CD in a big box stores. I did pay $17 for Gustafer in B&N but it's a DVD/CD combo so I felt like that wasn't too insane (plus it's only $2 more than the band charges in person).
Hopefully the Bear's friend will dig it all - the Bear is on record as telling us that this girl likes art...so there you go. For the Bear's party, we are definitely probably holding it at World Cafe Live during the Justin Roberts show and we without a doubt are not inviting the whole damn classroom even if it means we are destined to be "those people" - after all that is who I always dreamed of becoming.
- Jeff - OWTK
- OWTK is a daddy blog where musings on parenthood, society and culture mingle with kid's music reviews, children's book reviews, and reviews of various toys and films. If you've got a family-oriented product and would like to submit it to OWTK for a possible review, please contact me (email address in the logo)
5 comments:
The great James Lileks referred to Bratz dolls as "hookers-in-training."
Those dolls and the people purchasing them are so beyond my frame of reference. I cannot comprehend it at all.
It's definitely uncool to give teh 'z' dolls to anyone, unless you know they're okay with it. The D company ones have achieved cultural supremacy, however. I don't think there's any way to avoid them, short of banning gifts altogether. A sad statement on our culture, I know.
At the party, I would say that 12 out of the 15 gifts were assorted Disney Princess merch - how freakin' boring. The little girl, who was clearly into princesses, wasn't even that impressed with the stuff as she opened it. People seemed to just buy it because she is a 4 yr old gal and, well, that must be what she likes. A lot of thought and effort there.
I am surely going to add a line onto the Bear's invitation asking for none of those items - arrogant or not.
I overhead one of the guests say "You just can't go wrong with Princess stuff" - umm, yeah...ya can actually.
Regarding the dilemna of whether to invite non-family members to a child's birthday party is easily solved by holding separate parties: One for the fam, and one for friends. Of course, this becomes a financial consideration as the kids get older, and a party 'theme' must be chosen, whether it is a bowling party, an ice cream social, a Little Gym party, and on and on. You can, of course, choose not to go this route and avoid the friend/classmate birthday scene, but at what cost to your child's self-esteem and social maturation? Kids need to be around other kids in order to figure out how to interact and succeed in social situations. Too many these days are woefully inept at these basic skills.....
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