The Great Birthday Season Cometh

Despite the fact that I am up to my eyeballs in holiday planning, my kids are already looking beyond Christmas to the Great Birthday Season.  Between mid-January and early April of 2011, my kids will turn 5, 7, 10, and 10, all of which seems entirely impossible.  I mean, really.  How the hell did that happen?

Also: really?  We have to think about this now?  I don't even have the tree up.  Why, oh why, are we even having this conversation now?

I'll tell you why.  It's because planning birthday parties is a year-long activity here.  The kids rifle through the paper recycling bin to find those damn party catalogs that I try to hide.  They browse through them, dreamily listing the kinds of parties they would like to have some day.  Then they get revved up and start asking for parties at those play places -- you know, the ones that are like Habitrails but for kids -- and then I have to break it to them that for us to be able to afford a party at one of those places, they can choose one friend to invite.

So they go back to the birthday party catalog, and mumble to themselves about whether a bug-themed party could possibly include live bugs, as that would be so much more fun than just fake bugs.

The Peanut Butter Kid is turning seven in January.  She's still a girly-girl but seems to have had the Disney Princess obsession dragged out of her, which is delightful.  She's moved on to that whole skulls-with-big-pink-bows thing.  She desperately wants a party "out" -- but not at McDonald's or Chunky Cheese.  She wants an Olive Garden party.  Isn't that what every little girl dreams of?  Unlimited pasta?

Side note: I used to work with a woman who consistently pronounced Chuck E. Cheese as "Chunky Cheese."  I never knew if she was making a joke or if she really thought the place was called Chunky Cheese, but either way it sounds even more disgusting than the actual Chuck E. Cheese, and I didn't think that was possible.  All the reasons I hate Chunky Cheese have already been summed up by Lydia of Rants from Mommyland, so I don't think I need to get into it here. I'd kind of like to give the Peanut Butter Kid an Olive Garden party just to celebrate the fact that she didn't ask for Chunky Cheese.

My older girls, Cookie and the Pork Lo Maniac, are twins turning ten.  Their big decision this year is whether they will have separate parties for the first time. They have always had essentially the same friends, so it's not a matter of that.  It's a matter of possibly wanting one's own moment in the sun birthday-cake-candlelight.  We have always had two cakes, always sung the birthday song twice. I've done invitations that have one girl's name on one side and the other girl's name on the other side.

I told them they could have separate parties if they want to; after all, turning ten is a big deal.  Double-digits and all that.

Telling them they could have separate parties actually seems to have made them somewhat less interested in actually having separate parties.  Now they are debating the option of doing a dual-themed party, possibly with masking tape running down the middle of the house à la Les Nessman.  They haven't gotten as far as deciding what those two themes might be.  If I had to make a bet, one side of the table will be decorating cookies and the other side will be scarfing down Chinese food, but that's just my guess.

This brings us to Little Dude, who is turning five in March. I'm hoping we'll be having a thank-God-he's-finally-potty-trained party, but we'll leave my wishes aside for the moment.  Little Dude is having a hard time deciding what kind of party he would want, because there are so many things he loves.  He's got it narrowed down to a Lego-Bacon-Pirate party.

Which is, in fact, the most awesome party theme I have ever heard of.

p.s. Don't forget that we're still accepting nominations for the Top Ten Douchebags of 2010.  There are some great suggestions coming in, including some names I had tried to block out of my head.