Peculiar and hilarious: My weekend with three 12-year-old boys

I used to always end Tim’s birthday parties with a sense of triumph. I survived, the house survived, and the kids had fun, I would tell myself with a rush of relief as each one ended. The farm party; the cupcake-decorating party; the outing to the minor league baseball park; the sleepover party; the miniature golf excursion; the day at the theme park. All were great birthday celebrations as far as Tim was concerned because he had so much fun; all were great from my perspective because, well, they ended with no one getting hurt. And sometimes they were kind of fun for me too. But more often than not, it was just a relief to know I’d pulled it off.

This year I ended Tim’s birthday party not with a sense of triumph but with a minor sense of sadness. It wasn’t that the gathering hadn’t been successful. It was just that for the first time in 12 years of hosting birthday parties for Tim and his peers, I didn’t want to see this one end.

I suspected that taking three 12-year-old boys up to Maine for the weekend just days before Tim turned 13 would work out pretty well, but I didn’t anticipate what a good time I would have. Partly it was great because the mom of one of the other guests came along too, and she and I had lots of time to talk and visit throughout the weekend, but it was also just that the boys were really fun to be with. Peculiar and hilarious at times, but fun.

Peculiar and hilarious in that any mildly interesting thing any of them managed to do – such as climbing a medium-sized tree, eating an order of fried clams or crossing a street backwards – involved not only the activity itself but the necessity of one of the other boys whipping out a cell phone, taking a picture of the endeavor, and then emailing it to ten or fifteen friends. Peculiar and hilarious in that much of the weekend unfolded in tandem with a continuous text-message conversation going back and forth with a group of girls from their class at school who were having a get-together of their own at the same time. Peculiar and hilarious in that when walking down a somewhat busy city street, 12-year-old boys tend to draw upon the rules of bumper cars more than of pedestrians – caroming off of other people as you tear along is fine as long as you don’t actually initiate any head-on crashes.

But really, what will stay in my mind about the weekend isn’t so much the many ways that 12-year-old boys are different from 44-year-old moms – such as when a formal wedding party arrived by boat at the dock adjacent to our balcony and while my friend and I, along with several neighbors who were watching from their own balconies, oohed and aahed over the pretty bride and her elegant dress, the boys expressed disappointment at what a smooth landing the captain of the boat made, even with a photographer standing right in his line of sight, because, of course, it would have been so much cooler if the wedding party had crash-landed at the dock – not any of that is what will stay in my mind as much as how much fun we all had. We took a long walk along the bike path to the beach. We ate mussels and calamari. We visited the ice cream parlor. We went on a 90-minute kayaking excursion on the Harraseeket River. We played badminton.

I wish I could say this birthday must be the beginning of a long string of parties at which I’ll have just as good a time as the kids, but this may have been a one-off. If I could turn back the clock to Friday, I’d do it all again, just because it was so much fun. But of course, I have to move past the weekend and into a new work week, just as the kids do back at school. Thanks to them, though, there are two or three hundred cell-phone photos of our fun now floating through cyber-space, so I can revisit the experience as often as I want.

Kids' birthday parties: Keepin' it real

Coincidentally, the boston.com Moms blog linked to this Associated Press article just a day after my 7-year-old called out to me from the post-bedtime darkness of her room to say she was mentally planning out her next birthday party. This is the kind of thing she thinks about while she’s falling asleep, and she wanted to update me right away so that I could start my part of the planning. Since her birthday isn’t for another seven months, I didn’t feel it was anything I needed to act on too quickly, but I was still curious to hear what she was thinking. Turns out she wants a penguin party this year, with penguin party favors, black and white cupcakes, a slip-and-slide in the yard and slushies for a snack.

Holly has planned her own birthday parties ever since she was five. To me, they never quite feel like the height of simplicity as her visions usually require quite a lot of materials-gathering and baking on my part. Reading this article, I couldn’t help but think it might be easier to just hire a clown, order up a bubble machine, sit back and let the fun happen. Instead, I’m usually busy pre-assembling puppets for a craft project, whipping up frosting for the cupcake-decorating contest, putting together a playlist of dance hits for freeze-dancing, and so forth.

Nonetheless, I’m glad that not only Holly but just about all of our social circle favor simple, backyard birthday parties. Oh, sometimes we go to parties where a juggler or guitarist will perform a set, but for the most part, even when clamor about over-the-top kids’ parties was in its pre-recession heyday, the concept wasn’t popular in our circles. And I’ve always found that notable because we know plenty of families who spend huge amounts of money on recreation in the form of kids’ extracurricular activities and family vacations. It’s not that they couldn’t do these kinds of parties; it just seems not to be a priority in our community.

But I do empathize with the mother in the party article who says her baby’s first birthday party was really for her. And actually, I think she’s right. Getting through the first year of parenthood is a major milestone. Tim’s first birthday party left me with wonderful memories. He didn’t yet have friends of his own, so we invited all of our friends. It was a beautiful day and we had a cookout on the patio at our old house. Halfway through the party, Tim went down for a nap and I visited and laughed with all the old friends I hadn’t seen enough of since Tim was born.

These days, the kids’ parties seem easy. Although in the preschool and early elementary years we tended to have big gatherings to which the whole class was invited, the traditions changed fairly quickly as the kids and their friends grew older. Tim is now eleven, and for the past few years, he’s favored a small-group approach, inviting just a few friends to a special event. One year he invited a friend to our family’s vacation house in Maine for the weekend; another year Rick took him and two other boys to Six Flags. This past fall, he had three boys for a sleepover; they went bowling and then played Wii games late into the night. Not only is it much easier to manage these small groups, but I like the way my kids now take part in planning their own celebrations and choosing activities they really like – roller coasters, baseball games, whatever – rather than the free-for-all parties of their earlier days.

So on the one hand, I’m sorry to see children’s entertainers getting less work; as a writer, I always appreciate any opportunity for artists to find employment. But I think cutting back on over-the-top parties might benefit everyone else: parents, birthday kids and friends alike. It’s fun to figure out how to have your own kind of fun, without bringing in the pros. And in my experience, as long as there’s ice cream somewhere along the way, it’s pretty much a sure thing that birthday boy or girl and guest alike will have a good time.