Play The Music As Loud As You Like. But No Streaking.

This is a quote from an actual conversation that took place this past weekend between myself...and Fourth Grader. And? It was absolutely necessary.

Fourth Grader has officially entered the land of double digits. She chose to mark the occasion of her first birthday to end in a zero by filling our house with similarly aged children and riddling them all about the furniture from sometime Saturday afternoon until after breakfast on Sunday. We invited 10, expected 6, and received 7. So with the birthday girl included, I had eight tweens to contend with.

Mercifully, Sixth Grader was invited to a sleepover across town that same night. This solved the problem of having to allow her to have a friend over, as I had allowed her little sister to do last year at her party. Because Sixth Grader can never choose just one friend, you see. They travel in a pack. So Sixth Grader was absent, and her pack was riddled across another parent's furniture, and all was good.

I can't remember what details I shared with you last year after Sixth Grader's sleepover party. Did I tell you about the never ending dance-off? Probably. About how she didn't want a birthday cake but instead wanted her candles stuck into a ring of monkey bread at breakfast? No? How about the streaking? Did I tell you about the streaking? Actually, there was only one streaker. Unfortunately, it was my child.

I recall that the party proceeded pretty normally up until around 1 a.m. I insisted on pajamas and movies around 11 and attempted to go to bed myself, fully expecting that I would have to get up and reiterate "time to calm down, girls" at least one or two times. It was more like forty times. No sooner would I doze off then the music would start blaring. Up and down the stairs I went, each time more agitated then the next, until finally I decided I didn't care anymore as long as they contained themselves to one room. I buried my head under a stack of pillows and somehow managed to get back to sleep - until about 2:30, by which time the girls had violated my Stay In One Room! rule and were spread across the first floor of the house, right around the staircase, and I distinctly heard several of them say the word "naked". At which point I had no choice but to get up and investigate, and made it as far as the top of the stairs where I was immediately "treated" to the sight of Fourth Grader (Third Grader at the time, mind you), entirely unclothed, running at full speed through the front hallway, AND then completely frozen in the spot where she had realized that her mother was watching the whole thing from above.

Fast forward to Fourth Grader's party a few days ago. First of all, she is a traditionalist, so there was cake. I took her to a bakery earlier in the week and she asked them to make her cake look like the Game of Life, which they didn't even bat an eye at (And it turned out so totally cool, I must say. Kudos, Frederick's Pastries.) Second of all, she really really really wanted to have a sleepover and she PROMISED me that they would not stay up until four in the morning and she would keep everything under control and nobody would even cry. Fine. On Saturday morning, we drove to the bakery to get her cake. This was my time to detail for her all of the many things from the last sleepover party that had frustrated, horrified or otherwise mentally scarred me - the icing on the cake (pardon the pun) being the streaking episode. She PROMISED me that nothing like that would ever happen again, (I PROMISE, MOM, REALLY)...and that, by the way, her choices that fateful night, under the wicked demands of her older sister and the pack, were to A) lick the litter box, B) drink a cup of toilet water, or C) streak.

What do you say to that? "Well chosen, love. Well chosen."

So there was no streaking. No truth or dare. No crying. Fourth Grader kept all of her promises to maintain control, and her friends strangely complied. Yes, the music was quite loud for a while. But they were all tucked in at 11 and asleep by 1. Which was lovely.