Exhausted

Did you ever have one of those weekends with the kids when you can’t wait until Monday because work is much less tiring?

It all started on Friday. This was the day of Danielle’s birthday party. This year, Danielle wanted to have a few girls over for a sleepover. We’ve known all the girls for years and they all play together well (mostly), and most of them had already done individual sleepovers so we agreed. As parties go, it was certainly the inexpensive route.

Victoria spent the night at our nanny’s so the big girls could do big girl stuff.

We told the parents that we’d pick the girls up from school and bring them to our place. When we planned this, we didn’t realize that Friday the 6th was a half day at school. So Friday went something like this.

Drop Danielle off at school, spend the morning running around getting stuff for the party. My wife picks them up at school, brings them home to drop off stuff. I take them all to Chuck E. Cheese (it’s four blocks away) to let my wife get the apartment set up.

Me and six girls at Chuck E Cheese. It wasn’t bad actually, you mainly hand out tokens and let them run around. So after a couple hours of that I herd them all home.

At home it was a variety of activities. Danielle is a big arts and crafts girl, so we had a ton of that stuff ready. There was also the obligatory game of Monster Tag. I haven’t figured out the allure of Monster Tag. It’s a made up game. The rules are pretty simple. I’m the monster, doors are base. If I catch you off of a base, I pick you up and throw you in “jail”, which is a couch. That’s it. Our apartment is fairly loft-like, so there’s a decent amount of space to run. This game is endlessly amusing to 6 and 7 year olds.

This followed with dinner, some TV, more games, and the challenge of trying to get them to go to sleep. We had them in beds by around 10:00, when they actually went to sleep is anyone’s guess. So, since they stayed up late, they slept in, right? Of course not. Up early and playing.

This was one of those times when you have to say, “we’re staying in bed, you all play. Don’t wake us up unless someone’s bleeding”.

But soon enough I had to get up and make pancakes and all that. Then more playing as slowing their respective parents come to pick them up. By around 11:30 everyone was gone. Exhale.

Had that been the whole weekend I think we would have been OK. But that evening we had some other family coming over to wish Danielle a happy birthday. Then the next day we had another birthday party in Prospect Park and I had agreed to take Danielle and her best friend. You could tell by that point we were all tired. The two of them were fighting like sisters and I had negative patience. But it was a gorgeous day in the park so we had leaf fights and jumping in leaf piles and the whole fall park thing.

That evening we really wanted to get some healthy food in Danielle, but given our energy level we ordered pizza. Reading books to Danielle last night she fell asleep right in the middle of the first book. I could relate, I fell asleep in the second quarter of Sunday Night Football.

This morning I had just one thought. Caffeine is a good thing…