I survived Sleepover 2010

Posted in Julie's columns, Mom Stuff
by Julie Wallace

My 6-year-old daughter came home from school one day and told me she wanted to have a sleepover.

Sure, I said, you can have one or two of her friends over for a night.

Well, the Monday after that discussion brought about a rude awakening: I went in to read with her classmates, which I do every Monday, and the whole class was asking me about the sleepover. The whole class — all 22 of them.

Yikes.

So that night, Mallory and I had a long talk about how we were going to pull this off.

I suppose I could have just said this wasn’t going to happen, but I’m usually game for a good adventure and this certainly sounded like one. I once babysat for 14 kids when I was younger, although I’ll admit in that case I ended up calling some friends for reinforcements because I simply couldn’t keep track of them all.

Anyhow, since I wasn’t so certain parents would be eager to have boys and girls stay the night together, I devised a plan: While I was on vacation (and very rested, with patience in abundance by comparison to a typical work week), we would have a New Year’s party for the little set. She invited everyone in her class, and we gave parents the option of picking their kids up after that part of the get-together ended or allowing them to stay.

We ended up with eight kids, two of whom were boys who left around 8 p.m. That left six little girls, who had me laughing for darn near the whole night.

My biggest foible — at least according to Lew, who was stationed by the video game to make certain no Wii remotes ended up planted in the big-screen TV — was buying those horns you can blow, you know, the ones that everyone has for New Year’s Eve. I figured they were a must for such a party, but goodness — do you know how loud those things can be when they are blown for hours on end?

Anyhow, we made 2010 party ornaments, we had horns and party hats, we played the Wii (a singing game for the girls, which was pretty cool) and we watched a movie when I tried in vain to get them to sleep before 11 p.m. Did I mention that we also had toasts in plastic champagne glasses — albeit with totally harmless white grape juice?

At least for me, the coolest thing for me was listening to them chatter. It became pretty obvious that my daughter picks good friends — the girls in her class all seemed really nice and really sharp. They are smart little cookies, all of them, and it was neat to get a peek into their world for a couple hours.

All in all, other than some semi-crabby girls in the morning after far too little sleep the night before, I was pretty glad with how it turned out as was Mallory. Now as for volunteering to do it again? That’ll have to wait until my next vacation. I don’t have that much patience!

–Julie Wallace