This party is for who I would guess is probably her “best friend” at preschool, as she hangs out with this little girl and one other girl almost exclusively; this girl is the one we saw while waiting in line to see Santa on Christmas Eve morning and she cried after her friend left to go home as she’d already seen Santa and wasn’t feeling well.

I still need to stop at a store on the way and pick up a gift bag to put her gifts into, and probably a little card to go with it.

Speaking of parties, the Kiddo’s is coming up in a few weeks but we’re not going to have it at Chuck E’s – mainly because it costs $10 per child to have a party at CEC and that ONLY feeds the kids – the parents will either have to share with their kid or get their own food, or even wait it out until they get home.  No, we’re going to have her party at her Grandmother’s house like we usually do and only invite a couple of her friends from school – mainly just the two girls she hangs out with most of the time, and family.

Although I may look into renting a bounce house this time because she absolutely LOVES bounce houses – there was one at the neighborhood New Year’s Eve block party and she was in it for at least 45 minutes straight when we first got there.  And she kept going back, even after we had to take a longer break because too many kids got in it at once, including older kids, and a couple of the kids, including the Kiddo, knocked heads and there was a bit of a crying fest for a while.  It didn’t deter her later, except I tried to keep her out while the bigger kids were in it since they can be so rambunctious and oblivious to the younger kids.

Now to just decide whether to have the party ON her birthday, which is a Sunday, or do it the day before.  Hmmm… What to do, what to do…

When we first got there, the birthday girl’s family wasn’t there yet so we walked around looking at all the games and rides and such (it was at chuck e cheese), and she kept trying to get on the cars to ride them. I told her they needed coins to work and that we would need to go get some tokens, and she started to FREAK out, I think she thought we were leaving.  She wanted so badly to go get on one of the “rides”, finally I was able to get it through to her that we weren’t leaving, but if she wanted to ride the cars and play the games, we needed to go get some “money”, and that we’d be right back for her to play.

After that she calmed down enough for me to break a $20 and then get $5 in tokens so we could go play while we waited for the rest of the people in the party to arrive.  Once they showed up we got more tokens from the birthday girl’s mom, and eventually started seeing more of her little friends from preschool.  When it was time to eat I had a difficult time getting her to part with the games, and I think the only reason she went quietly is because we were following one of her friends from school.

After a few bites of pizza and then the cake and watching the chuck e party parade from afar (she didn’t want to participate), we watched the birthday girl open her presents and then went to play a few more games.  It was getting close to 3p so I decided it was time to head home so she could still get some semblance of a nap, so we went back to thank the birthday girl’s mom for inviting us (and to get a goodie bag), then stopped to count out how many tickets we had to see if we could get any of the cheap little prizes.  We had 73 tickets – most that we earned, but a few had either been left still attached to a game with no one in site to claim them or fallen to the ground.   So she got a little bracelet and two rings.  We still had like seven tokens left and the three tickets, so on my way out I was looking for someone to give them to so they wouldn’t go unused, and saw a kid of probably like 10 yrs old putting $1s into the token machine.  I held out the token cup with the tickets to him and offered them to him, saying we were leaving and that he could have them as we wouldn’t be using them.  He kind of hesitated for a moment (geeze, you’d think I was offering him drugs or something) but quietly took the cup and the Kiddo and I went on our way.

Once we were home it took her some time to wind down, I think she fell asleep finally sometime just before 4p.  And since I didn’t want her staying up all hours I had my husband wake her up while I was making dinner just after 5p (and boy was she cranky! definitely not long enough of a nap).

It was fun overall but I am not sure we’ll go to anymore parties like that unless it’s later in the day (as in, AFTER her nap), at least until she is no longer taking naps.  Except for her cousins’ birthday parties and her own, of course.  But for school friends, I think we may politely decline unless, like I said, it’s later in the day or she is old enough that she does not still NEED a nap during the day.

I still have to go shopping and find a gift for her friend.  Her friend’s mom said anything Dora would be fine, her life revolves around Dora right now.  I looked at W@l-M@rt the other day but their selection of Dora stuff was rather pathetic, so I’ll be going to ToysR#s probably sometime tonight or tomorrow to see what they have to offer.