Lesson Learned This Weekend

I am not a sleepover kind of parent.

I am a parent that will cheerfully and enthusiastically cater to whatever your birthday cake desires are. If you can envision it and clearly articulate what you want, I'll give it a shot. Nate's "The Horror of Cake War" cake was deemed epic by his friends.

I will go along with an endless Nerf gun battle in the house as long as my bedroom, my husband's study and the dining room remain off limits. I can deal with the eleventy billion foam darts littered throughout the house. I will calmly walk through the fire fight and ignore the darts flying around me. To their credit not a single dart hit me.

But I can't deal with loud voices at 2:00 am, every light turned on downstairs at 3:30 am, and bizarre questions about birthday presents at 4:00. The last bit resulted in my telling Nate that in all likelihood he was never having a sleepover again.

The boys weren't particularly awful or ill-behaved (well except for the question bit at 4:00am and that was my own child), in fact the two guests are a lovely pair of polite and well mannered children. I'm just getting to old to deal with the random interruptions in my sleep and the endless noise. I treasure the peace and quiet that descends on this house every night at 10:00 pm.