An overly long explanation of why the pictures at the end of the post look suspiciously like they were taken at a party

(Note: the picture above is not a spoiler. I just thought he looked cute. Look at those little legs flail! And it's my blog, so I can do what I want with it. Even post random, non-related photos. Deal with it. I don't whine when I read your blog, do I?)

Having four children can be a lot like being head of the circus. It gets crazy some times--nap times, breakfast times, dinner times, schoolwork times, etc. We don't live in a house so much as on a permanent three-ring stage. We have our resident monkeys, our occasional lion-taming act, our clowns, and even side-shows. (I have done my time as the fat lady, and Roberto does a pretty good zombie act--usually around four a.m. when the performers demand attention.)

That's all par for the course around here. We're used to it--even if the neighbors call to complain about the occasional stench or escaped animals.

What throws us for a loop is when we open the big-top flaps to audiences. Like, say, when we have a party. We're good in rehearsal, but poor in performance, if you catch my metaphoric drift.

The boys have been--I'd say pestering, but that has such a negative connotation, no?--attempting to coax us persistently to have a party for some time now. Every time a birthday would come up--nearly every month between October and April--they'd ask with big, wide, puppy-dog eyes (who taught them that trick? You know who you are, and you're on my "bad" list!) "Are we having a party for me?" Flutter, flutter of the eyelashes, winsome smile in place.

Unfortunately they tended to ask on the day on the anticipated event, and we--fat lady and zombie dude--would be caught in their traps, exposed as the rotten parents our children think we are. "Oh," we said, desperately looking for an escape route. "That's an iinteresting idea. But you just had a party sometime in the previous decade, and we're trying to keep it all even between you. You know how bad the others would feel if we threw a party for you and didn't throw one for them. And your sister didn't get one this year." (Ha! Quick thinking--use the old let's-make-it-even junk they toss at us regularly. How do you like it now, buster?????!) That worked for a whole year, thank you very much. You may congratulate us on our narrow escape.

Somehow, though, this year they caught on. (Drat those intelligent genes we passed on! This is one situation when slightly less-smart children would be a plus. As it would when I try to sneak-eat chocolate around them. The children who refuse to do math homework put two and two together pretty quickly in those cases.)

"MOM!," one overly-analytical child would state/shout, absolutely gleeful in his realization. "None of us has had a party, so we can start all over again and it'll still be even ." Foiled again.

So we compromised: no birthday parties, but we'd throw an end-of-the-school-year party at the appropriate time. (Which, interestingly enough, became subject to interpretation and debate. March, they pointed out, more than once, was close to the end of the school year, as was April. We had to define the party parameters more strictly.)

Slight problem: the only date available for an end-of-the-school-year party, actually near the end of the school year but not actually when school was out--dear goodness my fingers are knotted up after that sentence fragment!--was this weekend. Right between Saturday the pre-camp certification day and Saturday the pre-camp fundraiser day. Also it was after a week when Roberto had been out of town. Good planning.

But we persisted. Goaded on by our party-desperate children, we sent out (limited) invitations--no way was I going to invite all 49 of my boys' nearest and dearest classmates to a party in our minuscule backyard. We began accumulating party supplies--which in this case meant collecting water balloons and bags of ice. (It's full summer here, and the only way to survive is to get soaked regularly. And I don't mean by the prices at the grocery store. That has the opposite effect.) Also, I learned how to make origami boats. Because nothing says PARTAY! like an origami boat-making lesson.

And then the big-top went up, and the crowds filtered in to see the spectacle. The monkeys and the clowns were very much present--and the fat lady and zombie dude did their best to keep it together despite. It was 102 degrees, but the show went on. Balloons were tossed; water weapons were squirted; ice was picked up by toes. Ice cream, cookies, and watermelon were consumed. Fun was had.

And now we can use the experience to beg out of a whole year of pleading looks. Success!