I am grateful that my kids are not assholes very much of the time and that they have friends. I am thankful that their friends and mine want to hang out with them and invite them to birthday parties. I am also thankful that I have been able to make it a priority to include the gym in my weekly schedule, so that I remember not to eat all of the boys’ leftover birthday treats as well as 2 servings of my own at said parties. With 3 kids worth of friends, that can be a lot of parties, and a week or so ago we had 4 parties in one weekend! Husband was away for all of them, so I valiantly packed and napped and organised the boys to 3 of them, and saved my sanity by asking our sitter to help so I could go out for the 4th one on my own. I did manage not to put myself into a diabetic coma during the entire weekend, or at the end of it, due mostly to the (brain washing) good intentions imparted by well-intentioned folk at the gym. Stay chipper, my friends.
Now that 6.5yo (really 6.75) is in elementary school, and 5yo is heading there in 6 short months (wtf?), the boys are meeting more people who don’t think they’re assholes – bless their hearts, and mine, I must be doing something right *sob* – and there will be even more parties, and consequently, more calories. Presumably, this will continue for another decade, at which point no one will want me to go with them to their friends’ little shindigs. On the flipside, hopefully that will be the point when parents start having kickass parties of their own where kids are either not allowed, or can take care of themselves in a bonus room with an xbox or something. And parent parties will have different kinds of party foods, me thinks.

Chug! Chug! Chug!