How We Survived an 11-Year-Old All-Boy Sleepover Party

It was my older son's 11 year old birthday. He invited five of his friends and neighbors to a sleepover. They arrived at 4 PM Saturday. For a slight variation to their usual delivery pizza fare, my husband and I took them to California Pizza Kitchen. I drove about 10 miles along the Interstate Highway with 5 kids in the car including my 14 month old toddler. The two other kids were in my husband's car. One of my passengers was making faces at the other drivers and the others were yelling at him to make him stop. They were talking and talking. I missed the exit. They pointed it out to me.

At the restaurant, we got seated in a big area at the back (for good reason, now that I look back). One kid wanted to order wine. He settled for soda. No, they did not all want pizza. The wine kid ordered a classic Caesar Salad. One ordered macaroni and cheese. The rest had four kinds of pizza.

Did I mention they were loud?

We were waiting for food. One of the kids was under the table pretending to barf. He came up and loudly announced that he did. (No, thankfully, he did not). We were beside the glass windows so they kept knocking on the glass and waving to people walking by outside. My toddler got the usual crayons and puzzle place mat. The older boys all wanted it so one of the boys was sent to the front desk to get 6 sets.

Food. Eating. Time to go. Apologies to the waitress for the loudness.

We got home. They all wanted to play night basketball on the driveway. They played for a few minutes but there were too many mosquitoes so they went inside. Video games. We took some pictures and they yelled 'Paparazzi' at us every time.

I suggested a dance-off (mostly because I wanted to be entertained). They spent five minutes of dancing to hip-hop music, break dancing, doing the worm, somersaults. The toddler was in the middle of everything and by some miracle they did not crush him. I videotaped it and got a lot of blackmail material for their teenage years. "You're not going to show this on YouTube, are you?", somebody asked.

Somebody got hurt. My birthday boy was holding his jaw. He got hit by an elbow and bit his tongue. He rushed to the bathroom sink and we put ice on his tongue. My husband said so much for your dance-off. They went back to playing video games. One of the boys brought his Bey-blade with the stadium and somebody was teasing him about it: "What do you do with it? Oh, you spin it and then wait for it to stop?" He was laughing like a hyena.

It was time for ice cream cake. As he bit on his cake, my son lost a tooth (probably as a result of the dancing incident). After cake, somebody suggested playing the PS2 American Idol. They all ran back to the game room. There was singing...calling songs and arguing about who called which song... and who was taking too long to pick his song. After one round of singing, they got bored and went back to playing Halo 3. Then it was 12:30 and it was time to turn the lights out.

In the morning, they were up at seven. We had waffles, bacon and sausage and milk. Three kids were claiming that they are allowed to have coffee. We said 'No'. After breakfast, they played more video games. Then, it was 9Am and pick-up time. All in all, there was only one bloody incident and it involved our own child. There were no lawsuits. We survived.

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