The Days After The Nights Before

The good news is, we survived the slumber parties au deux. The bad news is, I now know what all those parents mean when they say that parenting girls is MUCH harder than parenting boys. The battle of the sexes is not one I've ever really experienced - because we were so focussed on day to day survival, we never really stopped to think about which sex is easier to parent. I would even go so far as to say I thought the whole "boys are easier" thing was a load of crap, along with other parental gems like "sleep when your babies sleep" "stretch marks go away if you rub them with cream every day" and "co-sleeping is a great idea!"

One night spent in the company of all boys, followed by one night spent in the company of all girls will change your mind on this one. Immediately.

The boys were predictably loud and boisterous, and pretty much ignored our efforts to corral them. However once DH used his Mean Engineer Voice (tm), they settled down and were absolute angels. They ate when we told them, helped themselves to drinks, used their manners, and basically had a whale of a time. As long as they were all fed and watered, and given something to focus on (a game, a movie, whatever), they were really great. Hardly a peep out of them. Of course there were two extremely irritating kids...but then those were the two who were far too precious to sleep over, so we booted them out the door before the real fun began. Actually, it's amazing how much getting rid of those two changed the whole energy of the party. It went from frantic and insane to calm and fun. So the boys were boys - they threw a bit of popcorn around the joint, ate far too much of everything, and watched something like 5 movies over the course of the event. In the morning they ate, hung out, and just...chilled out all over our lounge room for hours on end and had to almost be crow-barred right out of there by their parents, several hours after the party ended.

The girls, however....ohhhh, the girls! The girls whined, complained, and nudged their way through the whole thing. Not enough chips, not enough games, stupid music, she touched me, she also touched me, her blanket is near me, I can't sleep in a room with 4 walls, my blanket is too wrinkled, my hair is too neat, aren't there any other flavours of chip? and so on and so forth. If they needed anything, it started with a whiny voiced, "mmmiiiicccchhheeeeellllleeee, I *need* a glass of water!" and then Princess would wait for me to fetch it for her. Ridiculous. I peeked in on them during the movie to find some watching, some dozing, some playing, and some reading comic books (and it was 7 girls, you do the math). It was as though they were not all at the same party. It was a long night for DH, who had to get up loads of times for crying, whinging, attention seeking needy females (which might describe me sometimes, but certainly not in the middle of the night.)

In the morning, the whole lot of them were up, dressed, packed up and ready to go at PRECISELY the time the party was meant to end. Early, even!

It really struck me how the boys were incredibly self-sufficient and self-entertaining while the girls looked to others (namely, DH and I) to get their needs met and their entertainment organised. If the boys were not happy (which didn't really happen) they would just move onto something else and be done with it. The girls needed to tell the world about it for several minutes, eventually be re-directed, and then whine about that, too. Fascinating stuff. Of course, it was the GIRLS who instigated a burping contest over dessert (which DH won, of course, for being able to burp the alphabet to a crowd of girls shouting at him to "do it! do it! do it!").

Girls, boys, whatever - I've learned my lesson on having two slumber parties. Probably a good idea, just don't expect your sanity - or your carpet - to recover anytime soon.