In many ways, Alexis is a mini me. She doesn't look like me, but HOOBOY is that my personality packed under that crown of curls. There are differences, though. Big differences. For example, she asks permission before she does ANYTHING. She won't get a snack without asking first. She won't go downstairs on a Saturday morning without asking first. She won't go to the bathroom without asking first.
"Mother May I" is her mantra.
I didn't do that. Ever. Still.
A glaring example of that major difference floated to the top of my mind lately. We're nearing Alexis' 8th birthday and starting to work on party plans, which reminded me of the whole thing. My 8th birthday party.
It's the only time I ever had a party. I did it without permission. WHOOPS.
I had saved up a few pennies and carried those pennies to the local grocery store. It was a few blocks from our house, which, HA! Alexis would never walk that far from our house without asking first. But, I walked to that store in the cold of January and bought a package of birthday party invitations. I proceeded to fill them out, distribute them to the kids at school, and then told my parents what was going on.
They kind of didn't have a choice but to go with it. Again ... WHOOPS.
But there was one little complication at the beginning of my whole scheme. There was a limited number of invitations in that package. I had to make some choices.
It turned out that I had just enough invitations to invite all of the girls in my 2nd grade class. So, BAM! PLAN! When I was done, I had one invitation left. I didn't want to let it go to waste, so I addressed it to a boy and that was the end of that.
The next day, I realized what I had done. I had forgotten one girl. I figured it out when I was distributing the invitations and she stood there empty-handed. I managed to cover for the whole thing and she walked away invited and totally happy, but I felt terrible. How could I be so inconsiderate!
To this day, I still feel bad about it, even though she did make it to the sort of party (When you don't have permission to have a party, you don't get decorations. Or cake. Or anything. LESSON LEARNED.). It's probably no coincidence that I tell Alexis she can invite her entire class every year for her birthday party. There are NO exceptions ... just invite everybody. Don't leave anyone out. Done? Done.
But, here's the thing. I don't expect that other parents have the same skeletons in their closet. I expect that other parents are more reasonable and do things like protect their sanity by creating restrictions. If a girl in Alexis' class has a birthday party and doesn't invite her, Alexis' feathers are never ruffled because I tell her there's no reason to get ruffly. "Maybe her mom only wanted her to invite a certain number of people." "Maybe her mom wanted her to invite kids whose parents she knows." "Maybe, maybe, maybe."
There's a million reasons why people choose to limit a guest list however they do so. It's not mean, it's just the way life works.
Alexis gets it. She has never been broken-hearted about being left out of anything involving kids at school.
Which, HOORAY!
I have all the happies that she gives people the benefit of the doubt and doesn't take it personally when she's not invited to something. I'm pretty sure that means she'll grow up to be an adult that doesn't throw a hissy fit when she's not invited to someone's wedding.
Which, HOORAY!
I mean, we have people that are still mad at us for not inviting us to our wedding 13 years after it happened. I'm pretty sure those are the same people whose moms complained about the "mean kids" who followed instructions and kept birthday party guest lists limited.
