Care and feeding
Hanna had her 8th birthday this weekend and we celebrated it with a party.

Instead of going the usual birthday activity party (in past years: bowling party, pottery painting party, flower arranging party), this year Hanna wanted to have a "disco" party followed by a sleep over. We thought it was a welcome change from finding an activity and making all the arrangements. How difficult could it be to host a sleep over for five 7 to 8 year old girls?

Arranging the disco did take some effort. Hanna really, really wanted flashing lights and thundering bass. Thundering bass was no problem: I hauled the stereo down to the basement playroom.

Flashing lights were a little more difficult. We checked into renting disco lights but they were expensive and would have required drilling holes in the ceiling or renting complicated rigs to hang them (the lights, that is). We borrowed a couple of disco balls from other families. Between the colored light bulbs we picked up at the lo cal hardware store, the borrowed disco lights, the blinky Christmas lights and the party decorations, Hanna pronounced the disco provisions acceptable.

Disco music was also difficult. My musical tastes do not run to disco, so picking out dance music was somewhat problematic but Hanna approved of over two hours of music that I turned into a playlist and downloaded into the iPod so they could spin their own tunes.

Hanna's selections were quite eclectic: some Moby, some New Order, some Parliment, some James Brown, some Hillary Duff (from her sister's collection) but also Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", Cheap Trick's "California Man" and Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and a couple of selections from The Pretenders.

So all the preparations were laid for Saturday night. Tessa baked the birthday bake. We planned a spaghetti dinner with a variety of different sauces for different palettes.

The first hitch came when we noticed that we were changing to summer time that night. I didn't think it was a major problem. Sure the kids would lose an hour of sleep overnight but how late could the girls stay up?

The kids arrived and pick up times taking into account the time change were arranged with the depositing parents. The girls retired to the basement disco and the parents retired to the living room to be at hand in case parental intervention was needed. Little intervention was called for, mostly calls for help operating the stereo. The fascination of turning dials and pushing buttons was attractive and the limits of volume and the subwoofer were tested and passed.

The spaghetti dinner satisfied all tastes. Big sister's birthday cake was a success, in spite of the parents putting those trick candles that can't be blown out on the cake. The candles were taken from the birthday candle cache and were unlabeled. We were surprised as Hanna when they kept relighting.

The birthday dinner was followed by some TV viewing. After much debate, the girls settled on "Flushed Away."

At about 10:00pm, we decided to get the girls ready for bed. The basement playroom/disco has a couple of futons. Between the futons and foam mattresses, we had enough to comfortably sleep the girls. We got them in their beds at about 10:30pm.

We didn't expect the girls to fall asleep right away and they didn't. We retired to bed at about 11:00 when things were quieting down in the basement.

Between 11:00 and 12:00 there were requests for drinks of water.

At 12:30 I had to break up a Monopoly Junior game.

Some time after 1:00 there was a raid on the cookie drawer in the kitchen. We slept through this but the sugar-induced noise awoke us shortly afterward.

It was time for Plan B.

Recognizing that the chances of four 8 year olds falling asleep all by themselves were slim to none, we transferred them all upstairs to the guest bedroom and Hanna's room. This meant that there were two groups of two girls instead of one group of four to keep themselves up. Raveled sleeves of care were being knitted up some time after 2:00am, actually 3:00am with the time change.

I managed to drag myself out of bed for the usual Sunday morning distance run. The run was brisk. The day before had been warm but the clear skies overnight had allowed the temperature to drop and there was frost on the ground. The night before I had figured that shorts, long sleeved tee shirt and vest would be sufficient. They weren't and the only remedy was to make the running brisk as well. I didn't meet many people on the roads and trails and I admired the new snow on the Jura and the sun climbing over the Alps more or less alone.

I returned to find all children and wife at the breakfast table. The kids were happy, as was Wiweka, and the morning run had restored my good humor. So we all pronounced the birthday celebration a success.