Do You Believe in Magic?

Ethan had his first ever friend birthday party on Saturday.  When we talked about what he wanted to do for his birthday this year, Ethan was very clear that he wanted to have his friends (as opposed to Mommy and Daddy's friends with kids, I guess).  To be honest, I had been resisting the friend party for several years (thankfully our shy guy wasn't too interested until now anyway), but it was actually really fun to sit back and watch Ethan interact with all his best buddies in his own space.  The birthday boy had perma-grin all morning long, and soaked up every bit of attention bestowed upon him.

Now when I agreed to give Ethan the friend party he so desired, we had to set some ground rules.  First, I would not be orchestrating musical chairs or arts and crafts or any such creative activities.  I know there are many moms (many of my good friends, in fact) who are very good at those sorts of things, but me, not so much.  The idea of entertaining a bunch of 4- and 5-year olds for a couple of hours is, quite honestly, terrifying.  So rule number one was that we would be hiring some sort of entertainment, or booking some sort of entertaining place to please the masses.  I offered Ethan a few different options, but the one that got him most excited was to have Phil Smith, magician extraordinaire, come to our house and put on a magic show.  And so we came to ground rule number two: I refused to invite all twenty school friends to cram into our tiny little living room to watch Phil pull a bunny out of a hat.  Of course, when I asked Ethan (Mr. I Love Everyone - see previous post) to narrow down the invite list, he managed to remove two girls.  Since eighteen kids still seemed a bit more than I was ready for (my mom says the rule of thumb is to invite the same number of people as the age you are celebrating - we won't talk about how many people were invited to my birthday bash last night - ha!), I made an easy rule that cut the list in half: "NO GIRLS ALLOWED!".  Ethan seemed okay with the idea, and we ended up having seven boys (plus our two) on Saturday.

Phil the magician did not disappoint - he managed to entertain the kids and adults alike, and kept the boys from doing this for the whole two hours:

I love this one because Ethan looks so happy and proud, presiding over his friends and his playroom.

 Instead, they actually sat still and watched in wonder as Phil delighted them... 

 with disappearing coins....

 and balls...

 and animals appearing from thin air, both of the balloon variety....

Even though Phil's rule is that only the birthday boy gets to pick the color of his balloon animal, he obliged the birthday boy's brother with a yellow giraffe.

and the real live variety!

Ethan especially liked being Phil's special assistant.

Volunteering for assistance-ship by raising both hands.

All in all, our first foray into the feared friend party was a big success.  I think I'll even consider doing it again next year.