Sleepover "fun"

Date: 8:21am, 19 Dec 2011

Daughter one is 12 this week and is already showing teen-ish symptoms. On Friday, I picked her up from school. I admit that I arrived the customary three minutes late, but she had already got on the school bus, thinking I wasn't turning up at all by then. I asked if I could show her sisters a bit of the school. "You are soooooo embarrassing, mum," she said, walking 10 paces ahead of me. Oh dear.

On Saturday, we had her sleepover party. She had invited a few friends and wanted to go to Lakeside to do some shopping. "Do not, on any account, sing in the car, Mummy," she instructed. I tried a few hums. She scowled.

We got to Lakeside and her posse went one way with strict instructions to meet up an hour or so later. My posse - daughters two and three - hid behind a tree and watched. "Pretend you're a tree," I told daughter two, who is very into imaginary games [she had earlier related to me a very long and complex dream she had had about hippos coming into the house and witches dressed as her grandmother]. "Saw you, Mummy," said daughter one, highly unimpressed by my fir tree impersonation.

Everyone dumped their coats on me [why?] and headed off. Practically every one of them was glued to their Blackberry. They probably had no idea I was being embarrassing.

Daughter three wanted to see Santa. "It's not the real Santa," said daughter two. "It's one of his special representatives," I said. "No, Mummy, it's some man dressed up," she replied with a withering 'don't you know anything' look.

We headed for Primark. It was even less busy than usual. I think everyone had either got no money, was holding out for the sales or had headed to Westfield. As usual, just as we had selected our round of 50p items, daughter three announced an urgent need for the toilet. We bumped into the pre-teen group several times round the shopping centre and ended with a last visit to Claire's Accessories [where else?] from which I had to extricate them with bribes of cinnamon pretzels.

My partner had opted to stay home with the baby - he said he felt this would be "more relaxing" for me. He also had a hangover.

In the evening daughter two's endless sessions on Youtube make-up forums finally paid off and she was ushered into her sister's room to do a makeover on all the party people. Daughter three tagged along and had her hair straightened. However, about an hour later when I went upstairs I found daughters two and three at the top of the stairs with tears of injustice streaming down their cheeks. They had been exiled from the party room and could not comprehend why. "They hate us," they sobbed. I managed to buy them an extra half hour, using all my diplomatic skills. My partner mumbled something about leaving them all to it and something about them getting themselves to bed. I countered with a rant about some article I had read which stated that apparently men have responsibilities and women have choices. Tell that to the single mothers, I said through gritted teeth [I think the writer only knows women who work part time and have well paid husbands].

I retired upstairs to exercise my choice to get the youngest children to sleep. The sleepover was still going strong at 1.30am by which time my partner had passed into deepest slumber. I was pinioned to the bed by the baby, but managed to circumnavigate him and make a very [I thought] restrained plea for everyone to go to sleep, which didn't work. So I decided to go for psychological tactics on my second foray to the room ten minutes later. I told daughter one that she was in charge and I expected her, now that she was nearly 12, to get everyone to be quiet. I went back to sleep, climbing over the baby and I can't remember anything more until daughter three got in the bed in the morning and asked for her own sleepover with me on Sunday night. NOOOOO.

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Related tags: Birthday | Sleepover