Krypto VS. Batman

Today was C’s 5th b-day party. For a variety of reasons (we’ve been gone for 5 weeks this summer, I have a new baby, I’m exhausted, it’s bloody hot here) I decided to keep it simple, unlike the Krypto party I threw in April. I had completely OVER planned the Krypto party... I spent gobs of time & money and overall, I wouldn’t say it was a huge hit. Most of the kids didn’t even want to do the activities I had spent hours preparing.

So for the Batman party, we set up our slip-n-slide and an old blow up pool left over from C’s 3rd b-day party. I only invited 6 kids, and one couldn’t come, so all together there were 7 kids (2 of which were mine). It was a really manageable number, and they had a blast for the first hour sliding and playing with water balloons and the mini water guns I gave everyone. Then we went on a Batman “mission”, which seriously took me 3 minutes to plan last night. It was a really easy treasure hunt, but at each location they had to do “training” to become super heroes. The training was things like push ups, running up and down a slide, sneaking softly down the stairs, jumping jacks, etc. I couldn’t believe how well that activity went over; they LOVED it. It took up a lot of time, too... about 25 minutes. One of the kids kept saying over and over, “This is AWESOME!” I felt like a rock star. The very last clue led them up to the attic, where a box with a Batman mask and 3 other things (a disc shooter, a glove thing, and a dart shooter) waited for each kid. I decided to get one big, nice prize rather than the bag of crap I usually give out (and always end up throwing away 2 days after the party). It was a huge hit.

Then we ate cupcakes. The only faux pas I made was accidentally buying those trick candles, which didn’t go over well with the birthday boy. I had to coax him back to the kitchen from his hiding spot in the living room... totally traumatized him, apparently. After the cupcakes we did a pull string pinata. I had decided to bypass the pinata for this party, since in my mind it’s a lot of expense and bother without much payoff, but C was devastated yesterday when I told him there wouldn’t be a pinata, so Travis took them today to buy one.

Most of the kids left at 5, but the Palmers had journeyed up from Brooklyn so they stayed and watched Pokeman with us and had dinner, and then went outside for water balloon fun part deux. They left at 9, and I just put my two down... they are beat. And the very best part of the day was as I was putting C’s pajamas on him, he said (totally unprompted, I might add), “Thank you for having that party for me, Mom.”