Pumpkins, Pizza, Movies and More

So the Social Skills Event happened.

The girls and I hit town early on Saturday to make sure we were home with plenty of time to clean up any stray toys that made it from upstairs to downstairs before their friends arrived.

The night before The Event, I stayed up and cleaned the bathrooms, took laundry to the basement and picked up most of O’s ‘junk stashes’. I didn’t want to be racing around like a fool right before the girls were due to arrive the next day.

Their mom was bringing them between 3:30 and 4:00 on Saturday afternoon. O was beside herself with excitement. She was planning things to do with every minute that her friend Delaney was going to be there. She was even trying to plan what Lyss was going to do with her friend Nora. Because Lyssie isn’t always as patient with her sister as I’d like, she snapped at O to stop trying to plan her time.

Ha, silly girls, with the planning and thinking they have free will. We’d bought pumpkins and webbing and spiders and pizza. I had their entire evenings planned to the minute, bwahahahaha.

Okay, so maybe not. I’m not really THAT mom, just a little bit That mom.

So Mrs. Porch arrived with Nora and Delaney and A and O were ecstatic. We went out to greet them and Delaney was sort of clingy with her mom. I heard her whisper, “I don’t want to spend the night.”

Her mom hugged her tight and whispered something back to her.

I decided to speak up, “How about if you just hang out with us for a little while and if you want to go home later, we can call your mom and she can come get you? We’re going to carve pumpkins later.”

That perked the kid right up and she peeled herself out of her mom’s embrace and joined Olivia in a happy dance around the yard.

Mrs. Porch thanked me and started telling me all the things Delaney would need that night. Then she stopped herself and said, “Sorry, I’m coming across as overprotective, aren’t I?”

Ha. Hahaha. I actually did laugh even as I said, “Overprotective? Have you met me?”

This got a laugh out of her and seemed to ease some of her nervousness and she quickly made her exit after saying goodbye to N and D one more time.

After that, it was one activity after the other. They had a fabulous time and I only had to urge Liv to talk to her friend a few times before her nerves settled enough for her to actually act like a normal kid instead of a maniac.

When Mrs. Porch texted me at 10:30 to let me know she was home from her own event and see if I needed her to come get Delaney, I was happy to inform the worried mom that her girl was sound asleep.

I’d planned for the little girls to sleep down in the living room with me and have the bigger girls sleep upstairs in the girls’ bedroom. I put on a movie for the littles and laid out blankets for them to lay on while they watched. I figured this might actually make bedtime less stressful for D. And it worked!! Go me.

What didn’t work was having the bigger girls go upstairs. Nope, they wanted to sleep downstairs too. So D slept in the recliner, Nora slept on one end of the couch. Lyss and Liv slept on the pile of blankets on the floor and I slept on the other end of the couch. (It’s a U-shaped couch, no toes were in any faces at the time of this Social Event.)

It was a miserable night for me. Tom was in the family room and his tv was on all night long. It was loud and annoying. I got up at 2:30 and turned it off. He woke up at 3:00 and turned it back on but thankfully he turned down the volume. I could still see the flickering lights but at least the noise was gone.

And on top of the television, Olivia fussed off and on all night long. Ugh. Poor kid. She was worn out and overworked from having a friend over. Social Events are hard work for the socially challenged.

But in the end, I’d called it a success. Nora and Delaney slept all night long and were cheerful the next morning. Their mom picked them up at 10:00 that morning and everyone was happy with the success of our very first social event.

We will not, however, be repeating this sort of event any time soon. As much fun as it was and as great as the Porch girls were, adding two more kids to the mix is a lot of work and I admire those parents who do this sort of thing with/for their kids more often. Once in a great while is enough for us.