GetRealMama: Weekend: Birthday party mania. And vomit. The fun never ends

The moment he was waiting for

What a weekend. Every ounce of my body is drained.

Highlights:
Friday night: Julian's second birthday party
Saturday morning: Evan's fifth birthday party
Saturday night: Zachary's vomit party.
Sunday: Mommy sore throat returns, this time with sneezes and sniffles.
In between it all: Epic cleaning/organizing in preparation for upcoming move.
Outcome: Total and utter exhaustion.

Husband & I with the guest of honor

I have so much more to say than that.

Julian's party was actually lovely. It was the first low-key birthday celebration I have ever done for one of my children. All of their birthdays have been major events, complete with bounce houses, party themes, food, goodie bags, pinatas and way too many people. Just last year we marked Julian's first year with a huge backyard barbeque. We had pulled-pork and cocktails. We had a bounce house and a birdie theme. There was tons of cleaning, balloons and decorations. It was awesome.I was hard work. It was expensive. So I did two a little differently. It was only a few close friends gathered at a local pizza joint and it was perfect. We had pizza, drinks and cake and the kids had colorful goodie bags, everyone was happy. Affordable, fun, fantastic.

Evan's party. Oh Evan's party. I steered my (almost) five year old away from the Chuck. E. Cheese hell of last year and convinced him to have a dinosaur party at The Lawrence Hall of Science. We invited his preschool class and a few of his other buddies from various places. We had dinosaur goodie bags and plates along with a modest bagel brunch and a huge cake. The entertainment was up to the museum- or so I thought. The party was incredibly lame. The "workshop" included a college kid sitting on the floor talking about dinosaur defenses while the kids squirmed for forty minutes, then directing everyone to make some flimsy art project out of green construction paper and finally letting us pet a turtle. I could have done better than that at home. I paid good money for that garbage. Then we had to share a large party room with another group. That group happened to be having a way better party than we were. These folks were doing it up right. No sad bagels and fruit plate from Safeway for them. No-sir. Their table was stacked with a whole bunch of catered sandwiches, fancy cheeses, cruets, and artisian breads. They had a whole bouquet of shiny-helium-practicaly-life-sized animal balloons. I felt a huge urge to apologize to all of my guests for having the worst party ever. And yet, when asked about it later, Evan was thrilled. He had a blast. He loved his cake.He loved his presents. He liked the turtle. He had no complaints... and really that is all that matters, right? I still really wanted tell those fancy-pants parents to take it down a notch, that they are making the rest of us look bad!

The rest of Saturday went along just fine, until shortly after bedtime when we discovered that Zachary had thrown up all over his bed. I ended up sleeping on the floor next to him, shoving a trash can in his shaking hands every couple of hours as he dry heaved and sobbed. It was heartbreaking and exhausting. When morning came he instinctively went to put on his baseball uniform for game day. He spent the rest of the morning trying to convince us that he was well enough to play, while flushed in fever and refusing most food. Poor munchkin.

And just as I was starting to settle into the idea of bed time this Sunday evening, looking forward to a day of working (away from children), I got a text from our babysitter saying that she was also sick.

Dude. The fun never ends.