How to Overshoot at a Birthday Party, or She *Is* Only 3, Right?

After a last minute, morning-of purchase of a gift, the fam and I piled into the car for the birthday party of a friend of Mags', ironically enough named Maggie. Maggie, the daughter of a co-worker of Husband's and a very sweet little girl, was turning the ripe old age of three. As with all things that might involve balloons, Mags was very excited.

Now, Maggie's mom and dad are extremely nice people. She's a stay-at-home mom with a Ph.D. and he's the CTO of Husband's company, probably with a pocketful of degrees as well. Neither of them sew or enjoy being naked in public, so you can imagine we don't have a ton in common, but we all get along well enough. We've had playdates at the beach or at their house, and they even invited us over for Thanksgiving this past year. I'm happy to hang out with them anytime (please remember this.)

At Thanksgiving, in fact, they were playing with some dry ice they'd 'borrowed' from work, so I wasn't super suprised to see a group of toddlers ooohing and aaahhhing around a large tub of cascading 'smoke' when we got there. In fact, I thought it was pretty cool too. S, Maggie's father, was even trying to explain to the kids what was going on. He talked about the gases involved, showed them an experiment with a candle; that sort of thing. Wow, I though, that's really...thorough! Parents hovered nearby, pretending not to pay attention over their paper plates of organic veggies and hummus.

Then all the kids were shown into the living room, where the next 'experiment' was waiting. S had reversed the blower on a vacuum and was showing the kids how to make a beach ball float in the stream of air. Again, more explanations of the physics involved, airflow, blah, And again, very cool, if not a bit noisy. As the kids took turns holding the nozzle, I started to feel a little lame. Geez, I thought, for Mags' last birthday all I did was let them run around and decorate their own cupcakes.

Then they handed out the gift bags for the kids. Guess what was inside. No, really -- guess. Lab-quality safety goggles for all the kids, and a test tube/dropper kit! Plus, a printed page of scientific explanations for the things we'd be seeing/doing today! Of course! I sank deeper into my funk. Jesus! I berated myself. Maybe I should spend less time teaching Mags the importance of running jokes and nonsense Dr. Seuss snippets and more time teaching her...you know, other stuff. Like, ummm, the physics of.... airstreams.

That was, until, S announced to the group that we should all go into the other room where they had... a camera obscura! And no ordinary camera obscura - but one that was tall enough for 6 toddlers to walk into and stand inside that they had built from scratch!. I burst out laughing and had to stifle myself by jamming my face into Husband's armpit, lest I seem rude (if not a little strange.) Suddenly I felt much better. I realized most of the parents present were out of their league, much less the kids, who were having a good enough time but were probably not gonna go home with more than a cool pair of glasses after the party. Again, S went through explanations to all the kids (and parents) who crawled inside. Mostly they just blocked the lens trying to see in/out of the box.

Then came the liquid nitrogen experiment with the frozen flowers. And then came the announcement that everyone was to go to the bedroom where they'd be doing an experiment to play with - get this - color blindness. I couldn't help it. I turned to Husband next to me on the love seat and whispered, "Yeah, and then we're gonna check for head lice and scoliosis!" He choked on his lunch laughing. Thank god I wasn't the only one who remembered we were dealing with three year old here.

Shortly thereafter, I had Husband drive me home as I was feeling like ass and needed to nap. Husband brought Mags later. At the end of the day, everyone had a good time; she came home with a bag full of stuff she promptly forgot about ("Do I get a balloon?") and I came home with the sense of being a great, totally normal and average parent.

I'm thinking maybe I'll shake things up at Mags' birthday next month with cupcakes and a pinata. Arming kids with sticks inside a house? I'll give you physics!!