Another sleepover?

You have children and they take over your life, it's all part of parenthood. Sleepless nights, dirty nappies, cold dinners after spending ages spoon feeding the baby. Then they get bigger, becoming more independent, able to make their own breakfast in the morning and bath themselves at night and lead you to believe you are finally going to get some 'me' time, that is until they make friends!

Don't get me wrong it's very important that your children do have friends, you wouldn't want them to be loners or outcasts and I'm very grateful that all my children have lovely social groups with parents that I'm able to get on with.

This weekend was like many, the daughter had 2 of her friends over for a sleepover and if it's not at my house they will arrange it at one of the other friends house. Both the mums of her friends work in the same school as me (which is the school they attend) and the girls plot with each other in the playground arranging to play after school or sleepover on the weekends and then they put us on the spot!
Now maybe if it was just 1 child it wouldn't be too bad but when there is 4 of them all plotting their social lives it means that I kinda don't have a social life of my own.

It's not just sleepovers but birthday parties! Now these can be even worse. I remember at one point there was a party like EVERY weekend and what type of bad parent would you be if you said 'no you can't go' and everybody else was. Now it's nice to have popular kids that get invited to parties but sometimes they are quite a distance away, sometimes they are fancy dress (which means going to buy a specific outfit for the occasion because I wouldn't know where to start to make one!) And it always means buying a gift. Being as organised as I am this means running around an hour before the party trying to find something appropriate.

Now I've just got to prepare myself to cope with what's coming next, when the children turn into young adults and want to attend house parties or clubs and drink alcohol with the opposite sex... hmmm maybe I don't really mind sleepovers after all!