Yesterday was the boychild’s tenth birthday party. Forced to invite his entire class, despite only actually liking half a dozen of them (another instance of school-enforced “parity”), five kids actually showed up. But they were all his pals, and they had a smashing time eating pizza from brooklyncraftpizza, cake and ice cream, and rampaging (as only a group of ten year olds can) in the pool. It was the single most exhausting two hours of my entire life, yes, counting both instances of childbirth, but at least the cleaning part was easy thanks to an above ground pool cleaning device we got just for this.
But they appeared to have great fun, and the boychild is now fully outfitted as Harry Potter, raking in all sorts of goodies, including a gorgeous set of HP-verse coins, a Hogwarts school banner, a beautiful wand, and a spell book. Hopefully the five classmates who attended talk up the party as “epic” (or the fourth grade equivalent thereof) when they return to school tomorrow. That sort of cred does a boy good so we know he’s going to have good friends for a long time.