I Threw My 5-Year-Old a Rave

You clicked over to read the article because you were like, “What the?!” It’s not what it looks like, I swear.

I told you before that I’ve never thrown BooBoo a birthday party, but on the occasion of his 5th birthday, he wanted one and we were all too happy to oblige.

Woo hoo! A birthday party! A couple of kids, a homemade cake, maybe a bouncer – all cool and all fun. Then BooBoo dropped the bomb, “Mommy, I want it to be a sleepover party.” Gulp. A bunch of 4-5 year olds spending the night? Hello, scary to be responsible for the overnight welfare of the 6 and under crowd.

I thought long and hard about it and decided if this was what BooBoo wanted for his first ever birthday party, by golly, he would have it, under one condition: the party would be small. My best friend is a triplet mom of 5 year olds, they’d be invited. OK, that’s 3 kids. My other best friend has a 4 year old who’d be invited, there’s one more. I have an older son, age 9, he’d obviously be invited; he lives here. And then there was the birthday boy himself, another +1. OK then, four guests plus my two kids equaled six kids; the perfect number for a sleepover partay.

I spent the better part of Saturday cleaning my house and working my ass off. In the final step of party prep, I inflated the kids’ inflatable ready bed sleeping bag/mattress contraptions while my husband pumped techno music through the house at the request of my fist-pumping kids.

As my boys were dancing and jumping on their mattresses with faces aglow, I casually mentioned, “Hahaha, techno and a makeshift bounce house. All these kids need are glow sticks and we’d be hosting a child rave!” …[read more]