Take a piece of cake with you...

Today was my second Christmas party.  It went well- we sang Jingle Bells, no one bit anybody else, the gifts we spent two hours wrapping yesterday were unwrapped in less than 10 minutes, and the children were stuffed with candy until you could see their snot crystalize with the amount of sugar it contained.

It always puzzles me when people with poorly behaving two-year-olds apologize to me about them.  Of course he is acting like a monster.  He's two, it's a party, and everyone is watching.  What better time to pull out the "I wanna" whine, followed by the "boneless heap" huddle and the "run away from mama" marathon?  If he's showing us his entire repertoire, it's our job to be an appreciative audience- I especially like saying "oooh.  You're gonna be in so much trouble when your mom catches you."  I totally chose four-year-olds for a reason, and that kind of behavior?  Totally the reason I went with the older kiddos.

Also, it's really awkward when a child obeys me instead of their parents.  I always want to say, "You were handling it fine, but she's not really sure I won't eat her, so she has millions of years of evolution screaming at her that she has to listen to me to keep me appeased, whereas she knows damn well you won't kill her."  I'm never actually sure that this will help the parents to deal with the fact that their little monster is my little angel, so I usually just smile and joke about the power of counting backwards from 5.  I do, however, really enjoy the preening I get to do when they look at me awestruck and and ask how I do it for 8 hours out of my day.  My favorite response is, "Well, with travel time and lunch, I'm really only doing it for 7."

Finally, what kind of insane person drops off a 25 lb 8-layer cake for their kindergartener's Christmas party?  An awesome person, yes, obviously- I'll make sure she gets personally invited to every party this year.  But what the hell am I going to do with all these leftovers?