PBSD - Post Birthday Stress Disorder

Finn's birthday party was last weekend and it's taken me this long to drink myself steady enough to be able to write about it.  Turns out that inviting nine 6-7 year old boys into a house filled with swords & Legos isn't as relaxing and stress-free as it sounds.

Five boys?  Probably OK.  But once you've hit nine, you've achieved a statistical scale which ensures that the following will happen:

• Someone will cry - most likely after being hit in the head with a foam lightsaber
• Someone will wander off - most likely into the baby's room, which they will declare a "secret room!" despite the fact that it's right off the main hallway, fully furnished and inhabited by a small person
• Someone will refuse to play the game you've set up - even though they game you've setup is awesome
• Someone will try to grab every fragile thing in your house with a mechanical grabber claw and not relinquish it until you physically strip it from his hands - after which he will shrug and grab a sword to swing at aforementioned fragile things

And this was just in the first hour.  It's enough to make a guy start drinking beer surreptitiously from a coffee mug at noon.  In theory.

Mostly what we learned is that with that many kids, someone is bound to be a jerk at all times.  Not your kid, of course, person-who-is-reading-this-right-now.  Someone else's kid.

From here on out, we're either doing all outside parties - which will be tough in March in Seattle - or we're just dropping the kids off somewhere where professionals can manage them.  Like the zoo.

My heart is already racing just thinking about next year.  Where's my coffee mug...