Jack's Double Digits

Jack is now in the double digits.  Ten. Years. Old.  Where has it gone?  I can remember a friend coming to see me in the hospital after he was born.  As she was leaving, she said, "Nice to meet you little guy.  I'll see you at your wedding."  I laughed at the time.  But she was right.  You blink and they're big.  Feeling a bit nostalgic and teary, Tom and I reneged on our original plan of not having a birthday party this year.

Since Jack was a baby, he's always had a birthday party.  Kindergarten--bowling, First grade--rock climbing party,  Second grade--we took all the boys in his class and their Dads to a Vandy baseball game.  This year Tom and I thought we would get off easy and suggested a sleepover.  I thought, he's 10 he can invite 10 friends.  But, then we got into, "If I invite this guy, then I have to invite this one."  and "What about so and so? I have to invite so and so!!"  Tom and I just looked at each other and said, "Ya know what, just ask them all."  We've had movie nights at our house and invited the entire class.  So we thought, these were just the boys...how bad could it be?

Bad.  I'd like to say I have memories of the slumber party but really they're more like flashbacks.  I can't remember the order of events, just little movies in my head that go in slow motion.

This is how it began.  I had just arrived from dropping the girls at my mom's house.  Apparently, all the boys showed promptly at six and Tom had to manage without me for the first 30 minutes.  I walk into the backyard and Tom says, almost maniacally, "They've already spilled a half gallon of gasoline in the garage!"  And this is how it ended.  Tom says, "Do you think I can just pile up all this stuff on the driveway and when the parents come to get them, they can just rummage through to find their stuff?"

We found shirts in bushes, only one half to a pair of shoes, a sheet, tons of dirty socks and a jacket.  It was wild, wild, wild.  But, Jack had the time of his life.  He must have told me he missed his friends a dozen times. In hindsight, putting out bags of Skittles, Twizzlers, chips and cokes....probably not the brightest of ideas.

Next year, who knows, we may do it again.  Kinda like labor, the more removed from the pain, you begin to think it wasn't that bad.