Slumber party in Spain

From the time she saw the four twin beds here when we arrived, Mozart has been planning a PJ party. There is nothing quite as exciting to a young girl than a sleep over and I must admit that this house did call for one. Our small RV would never do as a location, so we thought we might as well take advantage of all this extra space and beds while we had it.

Mozart was almost more excited about the PJ party than anything else at Christmas. She hand made the invitations and it was all they talked about at recess  before school let out. One girl (who had an older sister) promised to bring a “midnight feast” to eat after “the parents have gone to sleep”. Every where we went and everything we did was colored by the coming slumber party.

Mozart proceeded to decorate her door and made up endless projects as gifts or notes for the girls coming or list for activities or menus. She is a real Martha Stewart in the making (& the poor kid has such a non crafty mom who is mostly clueless in the party department). She made a “girls only” sign and a list of the people that would be allowed into her room and taped them to her door (and continued to re-tape them almost daily as they fell off regularly in the few weeks wait for the party). Luckily, I was allowed in and thankfully Daddy does not take such kids sexists antics seriously. She loves the idea of making the rules and endless projects or lists to go with them, but is not much of an enforcer
(especially when Daddy is bringing in a treat).

The kids here like to play that they are Bratz while on recess, so that is what Mozart wanted as “the theme” for the party. I hate Bratz and Barbies, but have succumbed to a certain extent with the Bratz craze. They are ugly fashionista, over made up dolls with removable feet for those who have missed this silliness. Sadly Mozart  likes them despite my logic and disgust, but she has always had a strong since of fashion and what she likes and dislikes (even as a baby!) and they make some itty bitty ones (good for travel) and some good educational products like the third grade level Bratz cartridge for her leapster and a fun Spanish language booster aid. Thankfully, she does not play much with the dolls, but succumbs too easily to the endless marketing to kids for my taste. It is a tricky road for a parent to discern how much to allow as I don’t think it is a good idea to totally isolate a child from their  contemporary culture, but I do not want her drowning in it either. So we gave in to a few Bratz decorations & balloons to make it festive. I lived thru my Barbie and Beatles phase as a child without harm, so I am sure she will live thru this.

Mozart loves a little Chinese dress that she got last year for Chinese New Year and wanted to wear it as her PJ’s. It is a size 2 T and I doubt many six year olds could wear it, but she only seems to grow up and remains very narrow, so can tend to wear things forever that have short sleeves (even if the hem is a bit short now). Pediatricians have a chart and she is average for height, but has never even been on the weight chart, yet she is always so strong and super healthy, so I do not worry ...(much, I am a mother after all). She is only 14 kilos (about 35 pounds) and loves to carry around our friend’s 2 year old child here who weighs 12 Kilos. Her best friend who came is one of the oldest and is the tallest in her class and Mozart  usually plays with older kids, so that is why she usually looks like Mutt and Jeff with her friends. But it does not seem to bother them a bit as she has always been one who can hold her own. More than one person has called her a “Spitfire” and an “Alpha” over the years, which fit her well.

As much as she was over the moon about this coming event, we were kind of dreading it even tho we kept it to just three other girls and they were all sweet kids. We were happy to see her excitement and to know she would have such fun, but as I have said before we are not party people and one child alone gives us a run for our money.

Surprisingly it turned out to be a much more peaceful event than we could have imagined. Altho everyone had RSVP’d, one girl got sick and one did not show up, so it was mostly one girl (her sister joined them for part of it both at night and the next day). They are best friends at the moment, so it was perfect that they got to spend this quality time together. Yes, they ate too much junk food (including the midnight feast... after a healthy dinner of course) and stayed up too late and watched too many dvd’s, but they had a lovely time, got along fabulously, Mozart read lots to her friend and we even got a chance to read our adult books and watch two good dvd’s ourselves.

In the morning we allowed them to have a little princess breakfast on the terrace which they enjoyed. We did not know it until then, but we could actually see her house directly across the way from us behind the school and even waved to her “mum” (she is from the UK). In fact, they were having so much fun that they could not bear to part mid- morning, so we let them play for a few hours longer. Gosh, it was so easy and they had so much fun, we might do more sleep overs before we go!

The other great thing is we got our dvd player working again. Wahoo! We bought it for her last Christmas just for this trip and it has not worked well due to something getting burned out right away. We have tried a bunch of things to fix it, but to no avail until now. We almost bought another one or computer for xmas. So we are very, very happy to have that working again!