Every Birthday Has a Bounce House Now

Time for the Reptiles!

Hello Parenting is a Jokesters! I hope your entry into June has been smooth and sunny. But if you’re a parent, it’s likely been a bug-sprayed sprint towards a finish line of teachers cheering and your children saying “I’m hot” for 2 months.

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And now please enjoy a post from one of our favorite parents, Lucy Huber.

Two weeks ago my son turned four and we had a huge party. My house was filled with screaming four-year-olds, parents of those 4-year-olds, Costco cake, balloons, and oh yeah, seven visiting reptiles. I think there were three snakes, three lizards, and a turtle? They came with their owner, a very nice man named Walter, who wheeled them into our playroom in giant Tupperware containers with air holes. Don’t worry, Walter does this all the time. It’s his whole business, My Reptile Guys (although it turned out to be only one guy...unless the reptiles are the guys?). He brings reptiles to children’s parties, or presumably any type of party, but I’m guessing it’s mostly children’s parties and not like bridal showers or funerals, but who knows. My 4yo is crazy for reptiles right now, so we figured why not spend $400 to bring snakes into our home. Every kid got to pet or hold the reptiles and even though his presentation was one hour long, almost none of the kids wandered off to trash my house instead, so enthralled they were by the creatures and Walter. It was great! I’ll probably never do it again. 

Kids' parties have gotten so intense. Gone are the days of pizza and running around the yard. Well, actually that’s still what parties are like but there is always this extra element. A bounce house is the most common, we’ve been to so many bounce house parties this year my son doesn’t even seem that impressed by them anymore. My friend Kristen once said, and I think about it often, “When we were kids you saw maybe one bounce house a year, but these kids are getting a bounce house every weekend, bounce house value has gone way down.” It’s true. Now it’s like “does your bounce house have a slide? A water feature? Talk to me when it has unicorns that spray water through their nose or ball pit or a regulation-size basketball court inside.” I’ve also been to parties with a sno cone truck that pulls up halfway through to serve everyone fresh sno cones. A cotton candy machine. An art demonstration where every kid paints a canvas. Maybe it's just because I live in DC and everyone is secretly rich. Well, except me, but I did have a whole live reptile show, so I’m part of the problem. 

But that is kind of the problem! All the parties have gotten so intense, you have to have literal snakes in your playroom to compete. And I don’t mean compete with the other parents (although, come on, of course I want them to think I’m cool and rich, although I am not really either of those things), I mean compete with the coolness factor for your own kid. If they're getting everything from making their own snowglobes to sliding down a real fireman’s pole to meeting Elsa at other parties, you want theirs to be equally as memorable. 

But how long can you keep it up? How do I top seven live reptiles next year? I fear I’ve outdone myself and he’s only four. What can I do next year? Eight live dinosaurs? That’s not even possible. Unless some sort of Jurassic Park scenario happens in the next year and the technology very quickly becomes available for child birthday parties, which seems unlikely. 

To be honest, I love hosting birthday parties for my kids. I love making little favors, I love prepping the food, putting up balloons, and hearing 20 screaming kids being excited to pet a blue-tongued skink. It’s kind of why I became a parent, for the fun stuff. But it turns out making the fun stuff happen is just as exhausting and hard as making the mundane everyday stuff happen. All of parenting is just so tiring, whether it’s carpool or corn snakes.

After the party, all I wanted was to lie down for several business days, but instead I was cleaning up cake crumbs and juice box spills and muddy footprints (both human and lizard) off my floor. I still haven’t gotten to magic erasing the wall covered in crayon scribbles in the basement. (Side note: whoever let your kid draw all over my walls, you are dead to me. If I ever find out who you are you are not invited to the live dinosaur party next year). So maybe next year we will just do pizza at a public park and call it a day. But on the other hand...how expensive do you think it would be to rent one of those portable rock walls?

Enjoy your weekend (or whatever part of the week it actually is right now). And don’t miss our new episode next week with journalist, podcaster, and writer Liz Tenety, who hosts the fantastic website/podcast/community, Motherly!