There are times when my 14-year-old can make me more exasperated than I thought possible. It’s almost as though she has regressed back to the 2-year-old “Why?” stage.  You remember that one... you remain endlessly patient while your child plays the game of asking "why" over and over again.  In my house, it went something like this:

Me:           “Balls are for bouncing, not for throwing at your baby sister.” 
Toddler:    “Why?”  
Me:           “Because it hurts your sister when you hit her.” 
Toddler:    “Why?”
Me:           “Because the ball is hard.”

Eventually, after ten “Why” questions, I would inwardly scream “BECAUSE I said so!" while outwardly I calmly answered each little "Why?".

Well, here I am 12 years later, no longer inwardly or outwardly patient.  The 14-year-old "why" version goes like this:

Teen:    “Can I go to a concert at the 930 Club with Hallie and Michele on Saturday?”
Me:        “Which parents are taking you?”
Teen:    “Michele’s older sister is taking us.”
Me:        “I don’t want you to go unless a parent is staying.”
Teen:    “Why?”
Me:        “Because it’s just not safe.”
Teen:    “Why not?  Michele's sister is 18, and Hallie’s mom said she can go!”
Me:        “I’m not Hallie’s mom.  I don’t think it’s safe.”
Teen:    “Why?”
Me:        “Because you’re too young to be there by yourselves.”
Teen:     “Why?”
Me:         “Please stop asking.  When a parent is going, you may ask me again.”
Teen:     “It's not fair!  I don't understand why I can't go!”

And this goes on until I scream the words, “BECAUSE I said so!”  I'm angry with her.  I'm angry with myself.  I  feel defeated because everything I told myself about remaining disengaged went right out the window after the 6th “Why?”  

I once heard an expert say that 2-year-olds ask, “Why” for several reasons: They may actually be trying to gain understanding or they may just enjoy the attention and the routine of asking over and over again.  I think the answer applies equally to 14-year-olds.   

What needs to be included on the invitation?
Heading
• The type of occasion (birthday party, baby shower, etc).
• The name of the person for whom the party is being held.
   For school age children, it’s helpful to include your child’s first and last name in the heading to avoid any confusion.
Example:  “Join us for some birthday fun!  Victoria Wrigley is turning One!”
          
Body
• Day and date of the party
• Time
   I usually include a start and end time. Unless it’s an open-ended family event, it’s helpful for parents to know how long
   the party will be and/or when to pick up their children.
• Location of the Party and the address
Example:  Saturday, March 15
                   2:00 P.M. To 4:00 P.M.
                   Baily’s Ice Cream Parlor
                   134 Whistler Street
                   Hampton
Example Sleepover:  
                  Friday, March 14 at 6:00 P.M. to
                  Saturday, March 15 at 10:00 A.M.
                  15 Willow Street
                  Rockville

Closing
• RSVP or Regrets Only line with your name, phone number, deadline and possibly your email address.
• Special Instructions such as “Bring a bathing suit and towel.”
• Rain Date – If your party will be held outdoors and cannot be held if it rains, include an alternate date or instruction.
 
 
RSVP Information
In French, RSVP is an abbreviation for "réspondez s'il vous plait” or “respond please”.  If you wish to be completely proper, you would use “R.s.v.p.”   In lieu of RSVP, some people use “Regrets Only” which means you assume they are attending unless they call otherwise. 
 
Personally I like to use RSVP and include a deadline that is about a week before the party. This gives me time to purchase any extra party supplies or favors, and if necessary, provide a guest count to a party facility. 
 
Using RSVP also gives me a polite way to call guests who haven't responded.  There have been several times when my children have forgotten to give me an invitation they received at school.  It’s embarrassing, but it happens.  If I haven’t heard from someone on our guest list, I call the parent and say, “Hi, this is Laurie.  I was calling about Scott’s party.  It’s next week, and we really hope Blake can come.  We hadn’t heard from you and just wanted to be sure you received the invitation.”
 
RSVP should include your name, phone number, the deadline date, and possibly an email address. 
 
Here are a few RSVP formats:
RSVP to Laurie Wrigley by June 1, 301-956-1616 or by email at laurie.wrigley@kaboose.com.
R.s.v.p.
Kindly respond to…
Please reply to…
Regrets only, …
 
Some people even use clever RSVP lines that match a theme.
For instance, for a farm or horse party, you might use “Yeahs or Neighs”. 
 
I’m going to add a note about my personal pet peeve.  Some people like to print, “RSVP to my mommy…”, but do not include a name. It’s cute, but makes it awkward for someone who doesn’t know the mother to respond.  It feels silly to call and have to say, “Hi, this is Laurie, I’d like to speak with Jack’s mommy."

Many experts use the conventional wisdom of “one guest for every year of age.”  While this guideline will ensure that the party shouldn’t get out of hand, it doesn’t have to be the rule.  Here are some other things you may want to consider:
 
What is your child’s temperament and your family’s social atmosphere? If your house is the regular gathering spot for family and friends, you and your child will probably enjoy throwing a big birthday bash. If however, your child hasn’t had much group interaction, it could be overwhelming to host a large party. Instead, you may you want to invite three best friends to a fancy tea or have a backyard bug party where guests make their own ladybug boxes.
 
Indoor party or outdoor bash?
Typically, it is easier to host larger groups of children in an outdoor setting than an indoor one.  And, sometimes outdoor games dictate more children.  For instance, you’d want at least eight children for a cooperative water balloon toss or a game of tag.
 
Where is the party being held?
Five guests may be just right for a making milkshakes in your Manhattan apartment, but ten would be better for tumbling at a local gymnastics studio.
 
How much time and energy do you have this year?
All parents are busy. There are times when you can handle a ten-guest party and there are times when your sanity is best preserved by taking four of your daughter’s friends to see a new movie and get ice cream sundaes.
 
How much do you want to spend?
Big parties don’t have to be expensive, but things such as favor bags, prizes and crafts can add up as a party gets larger, so cost may be a consideration.
 
Who should you invite?
Invite your child’s closest friends unless your child’s school dictates that you must invite everyone.  Even children as young as three can help create a guest list.  For preschool parties, include close family and friends and/or the friends your child mentions most often.

I thought I’d start a series on invitation etiquette, but I’d like to add a caveat…
There may be times when you’ll be too busy or things will happen that will keep you from doing everything “by the book”.  If that happens, it’s helpful to remember that most other mothers will understand, and probably relate.

Question: “When should I mail birthday party invitations?”

Answer: Invitations should be mailed about 3 weeks before the party. 
This gives guests time to save the date and RSVP.  It also allows you enough time to purchase any extra party supplies.

However, please do as I say, not as I do...  My son’s 13th birthday party was supposed to be yesterday, March 15.  Scott and I hand-delivered his paintball party invitations a week ago.  I run a party company, so I should be on top of this stuff, right?  Instead, it just makes me more embarrassed when I’m not.  I knew his birthday was coming up, but until I flipped my calendar to March, it didn’t quite register that we were way behind this year.

Then, after delivering invitations 8 days ago, and begging the forgiveness of each mother, we had to call 2 days ago to say we were rescheduling the party to April 5.  Why?  Because a rare tornado blew through the adventure park and flattened the paint ball course... I think the birthday gods are not amused by my lack of prior planning. 

My hair has issues.  I inherited a gray, skunk-like streak in the front of my head.  If I don’t get it colored every five weeks, I look like some Addams Family relative... But, I don’t plan ahead very well.  So, this means that my very popular hairdresser is always booked when I need her. 
 
While on the cancellation waiting list a few months ago, I decided in desperation to color my hair myself.  For those who might have thought about doing the same?  Don’t!  The “nice and easy” part?  It’s a trick.
 
Here’s what I learned… Apparently, Heather Locklear and Eva Longoria don’t actually have to go to the store themselves and decide which box of Loreal is the right color.  They’re so “worth it” they must have an assistant for that.   It’s really a daunting decision! 
 
You stand in the aisle staring at shelf after shelf of brands and hair color shades...  warm brown, honey brown, ash brown, chestnut, and on and on.  Once you select a color, you have to decide on cool vs. warm, and highlights vs. no highlights.  And those little hair swatches on a key ring?  You can’t really get your head down to the swatch very well, and there isn’t a mirror.  I finally settled on “warm brown with golden highlights”.  It seemed safe. 

Two hours and one shower later, I had a hair color that would be impossible to achieve at birth.  It was a sort of darkish, reddish, purplish color.  My 14-year-old said I looked like “Goth mom”.
 
The fix?  I drove an hour away on a Sunday to go to an Aveda salon and paid … well, let’s just say it was a figure north of $200… to have the situation corrected.
 
Now I’m on some sort of hairdresser Match.com quest.  I’ve seen four hairdressers in three months.  I’ve had my hair shortened by four inches, layers bobbed off, under layers put back in (who knew there was such a thing) , hair lightened, hair darkened, subtle highlights, chunky highlights…. I’m doing the hair equivalent of sleeping around.
 
It’s way too late to casually walk back in and talk to my original hairdresser.  I have “cheater” plastered all over my head.  My friends that see her keep mentioning that she’s asking about me.  I’m pondering breaking up with a note...  Some lame line from high school like “It isn’t you, it’s me.  We’re better off as friends.”

If you have a High School Musical fan at home, I’m sure you’re aware that the new movie is being aired tonight on Disney.   You may even have a pile of  East High Wildcat fans sleeping over to watch the show.

So, here are some last minute music party activity ideas from our recent Birthday in a Box newsletter…

Name That Tune Choose one child to be the DJ, divide everyone else into two teams, and place a bell in front of each team.  Have the DJ play a few bars of a familiar song.  If a team knows the  song, they ring the bell and name the song.  Award the teams a point for each correct answer.

They’re Playing My Song!  Invite the kids to take turns lip-synching the words to their favorite songs.  Have the group vote on who’s the most convincing artist. 

Dance Craze
Ask each guest to write a word, such as “river” or “sunflower”, on a slip of paper.  Gather the slips in a big bowl, and let the kids take turns selecting a slips of paper and making up a dance to match the words. 

Making a Music Video
Separate the kids into groups and give each group a CD player, CDs, and a room to use.  Let each group pick a song and choreograph a 30 second “music video” to show the other groups!

We had inventory at Birthday in a Box last week.  One of the products I counted was cheese erasers.  In fact, I counted 1,132 cheese erasers.  They are part of our Ratatouille party favor sets.  As you can imagine, it takes a while to put those little suckers in piles of 10.  So while I was counting, I thought about how much I like the theme.  This was a party theme that I pushed my Product Manager to pick up.

So, here's how the buying process works around Birthday in a Box.  I have a Product Manager named Kerry, who has worked with me for six years.  Kerry is smart and good at what she does, and further, she'll be the first to tell you.  The thing I like best about her is that we share the same taste. 

Every few months we go through this buying farce.  Kerry presents the party themes she wants to add or drop.  She pretends to value my opinion, and I pretend she isn't pretending.  This little sham usually keeps me out of her way.  However, I occasionally feel the need to insert myself by suggesting a product or theme that I love.

Sometimes the "Laurie buys" go well and sometimes they don't.  It's painful to make a mistake. I wander into Kerry's office, head bowed, mention that sales look light, endure her sighs, and act thankful when she says she'll see if she can put the offending product on sale.  It's excruciating. 

I'm telling you all of this to set you up for my grass roots campaign to get everyone I know to purchase Ratatouille birthday party supplies.   This was a Laurie purchase, and a big one, and I really don't want to be wrong.  I saw the trailer months ago and fell in love.  I know it should sell. 

At its heart, Ratatouille is a story about believing you can do anything you set your mind to.  People love the movie.  Since it's release, the reviews have been fabulous --
"brilliant animation"
"sweet"
"refreshing"
"original"
"Pixar does it again!"

Best of all, this movie translates really well to a birthday party theme.  It's about this rat chef, so you can carry the theme by hosting a kids' cooking party with all kinds of fun activities.

• Imagine little party-goers with face-paint pink rat noses and whiskers. 

• As guests arrive, you present them with fabric markers which they use to decorate their own cloth chef hats and aprons.

• You entertain them by playing a game of "hot potato" with a huge wooden spoon and by playing "pin the chef hat on the rat".

• While you get ready for the next activity, you keep them occupied with a scavenger hunt.  They hunt for ingredients to make something yummy.  When all of the items are found, the party-goers guess what they'll be making.  They can make chocolate pudding, oreo cookie edible, muddy mess which they can decorate with candy.  Or, they can make mini pizzas or decorate cupcakes. 

Here's a complete party planning guide:
http://www.birthdayinabox.com/lobby.asp-page-partyguide-bgs-45

Please buy the Rat!

There’s something different about my house this week.

I couldn’t quite place it on Tuesday, but yesterday, I had an “ah-ha” moment.  It’s Silence!  There hasn't been a single screeching catfight between my daughters over clothes.  My son hasn't burst into the bathroom screaming, “Mooooooom” because one or both of his sisters are bugging him. 

And why is it quiet?  It’s because my middle daughter, Victoria, is at camp for the week. It’s not that Tori is particularly horrible, it’s just because with one child away, the perfect storm is off-kilter.  

There are nights when my girls will stand in the hallway between their rooms, screaming and fighting for 20 minutes about clothes. “Mom, she has my white cami.  Make her give it back.” …as if I would actually know to whom it belonged!

I understand that my kids are not the only ones who fight.  I had a roommate in college who had a four-prong scar on her stomach from a fork her brother inserted at the dinner table. My own brother, Jeff, chased me with matches.  I get it.  It’s just that it doesn’t make it any easier to live with.  There are moments when I think the only thing keeping me from murdering my darling offspring is the fact that my husband is in the house and would probably feel compelled to report the crime. 

My current parenting read is by Anthony E. Wolf and is titled, “Get out of my life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall?”  The title is enough to give faith in this guy’s understanding of the teenage psyche.  A few weeks ago, I skipped ahead to the section on siblings.  He suggests, “If parents stay out of the way, siblings really can resolve the majority of their disputes, but in their own way and not without squabbling and often not exactly as their parents would have wanted.  Assuming there’s no threat of physical violence, the absence of parents facilitates this resolution.” 

But, it’s so HARD to stay out of their fight when you just want to go to sleep!

Oh, well.  I’m going to take solace in the fact that each of my children has chosen to go to camp a different week this summer.  Three weeks of only two children at a time.  Bliss!  When my third child was born, my dad made a comment I didn’t understand at the time.  He said, “Your mom and I will be happy to watch any two, any time.”  There’s a smart man!

My tennis team won the USTA Maryland District Championships this weekend! We each received a watch as a trophy, and our team picture will be on the web, and we get to go to the East Coast Sectionals tournament in August.

The tournament was held over three days, and I was able to take off Friday so that my tennis partner, our team captain, and I could play in four of the matches.  

Sounds like we earned bragging rights, doesn’t it? Well, not quite.  Sunday evening, the congratulations emails started pouring in from teammates and friends who came to watch. Here’s an excerpt from one of the emails…
“To Lisa and Laurie - thanks for not having mercy to your 'tough' opponents, a pregnant woman and the lady with one real leg - you two sure got them all......”

So, yes, you read it correctly.  In fact, Lisa and I had a match against a woman who was seven months pregnant (with her second child).  How do you psych yourself up for that?  

We saw her walking up to the registration desk, and I told my partner that I didn’t know how I could feel good about running her around a court.  What if she fell or something? Lisa told me to just pretend she was overweight and not to think about it because, she reasoned, if she could play that pregnant, she had to be really good.

I served the first ball at an angle that took her off the court, and not only did she run it down, she hit a blistering return behind us for a winner.  We won the match, but when I told my husband how well we played, I had this big ASTERISK after it… BUT, one of them was seven months pregnant.  He wasn’t there.  He didn’t see how good she was.  

So, you’d think that would be enough for the gods to dish out, but NO!  In our final match, Lisa and I played the opposing team captain and her partner.  The team captain had a prosthetic leg.  She only had one good leg, and she was awesome!  I have a, big, purple bruise on my right thigh to prove it.  She took one of my partner’s shots and drilled it into my thigh.  Still, it’s hard to feel really great about my 44-year-old tennis ability when my best shots were passing this woman down the alley (on her prosthetic leg side).  Another big, fat ASTERISK after that win as well.  
Winning wasn’t quite the proud moment I’d hoped to have had, (even though, I swear we had to work really, really hard to win those matches), but it was an inspiring weekend.  I have met some amazing women at tennis matches.

My friends signed me up for a tennis team and told me on my 40th birthday.  It has been such a pleasure to get to know so many different women and enjoy something that takes us out of our normally hectic lives.  The women on my team are old, young, tall, short, married, single, divorced, immigrants, Asian, Caucasian, working moms, stay-at-home moms, thin, overweight, Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and on and on. Despite our varied backgrounds, everyone brings something unique that helps us pull together to support each other on and off the court.   

Can’t wait to see what the gods have in store for us at Sectionals!