An Afternoon Of Firsts

Kyla got invited to a Princess Party by one of  her friends at school.

This is probably something that happens to your kids often, but for us it was a HUGE first.  You see, the problem was not that she was invited to the party, but more that Riya WASN’T invited.  This was the very first time the one was invited with the other expected to stay at home.

Although our girls are a year and 2 weeks apart and are developing age appropriately and all that, they are basically like twins.  They do everything together.  Always.  Once Ri was sick and got to stay home with Ga and Kyla had to go to school.  They said goodbye to each other with hugs and a kiss which they always do with Knox but never with each other.  When we got into the car and dropped Riya off, Kyla said in a soft voice, “I miss my Riya”.

But we knew the day was coming where we would have to tell them that only Kyla was going to the Princess Party and Riya was going to have to stay at home with Seth and Knox.  When we told her she first thought I was joking, but as realisation hit so did the tears.  She just couldn’t understand why she was not going with.  So we did what every good parent does and bargained…

Kyla gets to go to the party but Riya gets to go to THE SPUR!

The tears stopped and that sneaky shy smile emerged and suddenly all was right with the World again.  That’s right guys, the Spur is possibly the best bargaining tool ever invented.  Parenting 101.

Anyway, that was one problem solved.  But what about the fact that I had to accompany my daughter to this event and then spend the afternoon with people that I had only seen a couple of times while we dropped our kids off at school.  Being social in person is so very different to being social on social media.  You don’t get a chance to edit or delete things that come out of your mouth…

So we went, I got into “confident Cindy” mode and just went with it.  The girls got to do so many things – make necklaces, jump on the jumping castle, ice biscuits, have a tea party, go on an egg hunt and play pass the parcel.  The Mom’s got to have an adult tea party and sit back and watch the events unfold while chatting over tea and seriously yummy treats (I may have cheated slightly at this point – but don’t tell anyone).

Going to a 5 year old party is just so much more relaxed than a 1 year old party.  Or actually, let me rephrase.  Going to a party with your 4 year old is much more relaxed than going to a party with all 3 of you kids (irrelevant of age).

It was a really lovely afternoon and I am looking forward to building those relationships with the Moms of the kids that they play with every day.  Plus it was a real treat to watch her interact with her friends that she spends time with every day that I don’t often get to see.