The life of the party

Lisa writes: Now that we've solidly established ourselves in the ranks of the married, we're starting to make little inroads into the ranks of the with children. We attended the 3 year old birthday part of a friend's little [genius] boy. That's him in the white shirt. When we last visited, nearly a year ago, he was singing the alphabet, counting to 100, and programming the Tivo.

The trick at these parties is to find a job -- something to do so you don't have to make conversation the whole time. Tom snagged the good job right away. He spent a solid hour on the floor inflating and reinflating balloons for the kids to release and sail across the room. It was like a room-full of flying Whoopie Cushions.

I picked up the secondary job of making balloon animals. As the majority of these kids were boys, and as I didn't think my one boy-friendly balloon creation (swords) would make for friendly inter-kid relations, I had to improvise. Kids are very sophisticated these days. They just rolled their eyes at my "dogs" and "giraffes," but I finally caught their attention with this ensemble: the helicopter hat and dinosaur tail.