Hannah’s Birthday is next week. We’re having the kids’ party this Sunday (a family party on her actual birthday). It’s been a couple of years since we bothered with kids’ birthday parties. The year we moved in here, Hannah was only turning two and in the spring we were planning a wedding, so we bribed the older kids out of having a party by offering them a chunk of money roughly equivalent to what we would have spent on a party. They’re old enough that that worked and set a precedent for the following years. And Hannah went on being tiny enough that we could get away with just inviting family and family friends over for an afternoon celebration.

But now she’s in Kindergarten and she seems to have a bazillion friends.

Worse, I know all their moms. When Ethan and Rachel were her age, I was a working single mom, remote from their social lives. I dropped them off at daycare and the daycare took them to and from school. I knew who their friends were, but I didn’t live around the corner from them and have to walk to school and home with them making conversation about their puppies every day, so I was able to lay down heartless rules about how many kids they were allowed to invite.

This year has been harder. Hannah says, “I want to invite this person and this person and this person,” and then I wince and say, “Okay, you’re right. I see those kids every morning and I don’t think we can exclude any of them. Alsssoooooo…I think if you invite this person, you need to invite this other person as well.” And Hannah cheerfully adds them to the list.

Nearly half of her invitees are boys. Which is, I suppose, really just representative and she is at the age before they’ve really separated into their gendered cliques. But, as her BFFs mom pointed out, most of the other girls that age are already princessifying, so Hannah and her BFF just gravitate to the boys’ play. A few weeks ago, a bunch of kindergartners and their moms ended up at a common house for an afternoon play-/knitting- date*. They were tearing around the basement, adventuring and then I heard some of the boys saying, “let’s set up this toy snake here and scare the girls.” I didn’t think anything of it but one of their moms immediately guffawed, “Hah! Good luck scaring Hannah.”

Another mom, after we delivered the party invitations at school said, “so what does Hannah like?” “Lions,” I told her. “Or knights or pirates or ninjas.” “Oh wow,” she said, “I think if their interests remain the same, our kids might just get married.”

Yeah, I’ve got no arguments. There’s way worse things to base a marriage on.

This particular other mom seems pretty impressed with Hannah. “She really is like a little lionness,” she said to me today. “She’s fierce – but in such a positive bundle of energy kind of way.” You know, I agree.

In other news, I’ve actually been able to pretty steadily clean the house in preparation for this party on the weekend. In addition to that, I’ve been getting done all the work I need to do. And I’ve even been finding some time to relax or to take people up on playdate invitations and get Hannah out of the house. I think it has to be the elimination diet. Seriously, I’m not sure I’ve had this much energy and focus in five years.

In other, other news, I’m tired of cooking.

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* kindergarten kid afternoon play-/knitting- dates: I KNOW RIGHT? Many of you are thinking how urban domestic I’ve become but it’s The Best Idea Ever.