Party All the Time

Last week, after bath, just moments before story and bed time, Molly came up with what I assumed was a new item in her arsenal of stall tactics.  She insisted that the following day was her bestie's birthday and that she wanted to make her a card - immediately.  I decided to humour her this time pulled out some construction paper for her to select from (pink naturally), let her draw with markers, wrote a message (care of her very explicit instructions) and had her place various stickers of her choosing all over the card.

The next morning, I checked the birthday board at pre-school and was surprised that bestie's birthday was in fact within the next few days.  That evening Chris came home from daycare pick-up concerned that our kids had yet to be invited to a birthday party by friends from their pre-school class.  He wondered if they were being left out.

Despite being a very active parent, I don't know a lot of things that many other parents do.  Beyond my own childhood experiences, I know very little about games and music for children.  I don't know the words to Sleeping Bunnies.  Molly's most requested music (beyond songs from Frozen and Sleeping Beauty) is Bob Marley and Simon and Garfunkel (which she affectionately calls Teddy Bear Music).  We don't frequent the Early Years Centres often and aren't incredibly social with other parents who aren't in our pre-existing friend group.  We are both, very vocally, selfish about our free time and want to spend it with Molly and Jack exclusively as much as possible.

Daycare drop off and pick-up with both minions is such a blur.  Beyond the  handful of parents whose names we know or we say occasionally hello to,  we typically identify each parent as either "Bob's Mom" or if we don't know the name of their child by their celebrity likeness.  For example Jennifer Garner Mom and Nirvana's Christ Novoselic Dad.  A lot of Molly and Jack's pre-school classmates  are going to be going to different schools next year, so I never thought much about involving them in party invite lists.  I envisioned dropping off and picking up my school aged children at parties, not accompanying their pre-school selves while I try with all my might not to actually call Jennifer Garner mom, Jennifer by mistake.

Chris sparked a concern -  Are the minions being excluded from social activities because their parents are seen, probably fairly accurately, as anti-social weirdos?

I began to text and email friends who are parents of older children to get their thoughts on when it's appropriate to invite school friends to parties and when does it get weird that my children have never been to one of these parties?  When should we be extending invitations?

Basically I was told that party invitations are more complicated for multiples.  Maybe a kid is friends with just Molly or just Jack and doesn't want to invite the other necessarily.

The very next day, our very first daycare inspired party invitation was placed in Molly's cubby, inviting both Molly and Jack to said bestie's birthday.  Now I'm in another question/research spiral where I figure out how much to spend and if I should purchase separate gifts for Molly and Jack to give.  I also need to prepare for small talk with a bunch of strangers.

Apparently it doesn't matter that Molly and Jack's parents have limited social skills.  Molly has enough to get all of us into the hottest parties.

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