Still here, juggling snowballs...

I didn’t forget about blogging entirely, no. I do feel like I lost my mind though. May is always such a very busy month, and you’d think I’d know that by now and be prepared, however this year some things happened that kind of threw me off. Some of them were foreseeable, some self-inflicted, and together with everything else, they’ve affected my mind and my ability to deal. Not only that, but some of them caused a snowball effect, which lead to further headaches.

So, what’s up? Let’s start with

William’s birthday party (Yay! My baby turned nine! :) )

# it turns out that one or two of his friends never got an invitation (I left the distribution of invitations up to William and never followed up) so I have some sad-ish kids and not so happy moms on my back – moms that I am supposed to be friends with, or at least was. I should have followed up, but work, home schooling, and everything else I've got going on got the better of me: when William told me the number of kids that had said they were coming, I guess I assumed there couldn't be any more kids out there that had not got their invitations. My main thought was, "Goodness! That's a lot of kids! How am I going to pull that off?"

# in the middle of the party, two of the invited kids left with their mom, without explanation and without goodbyes. Or actually, one of them told me he was bored (all the kids were playing “Capture the flag,” and he told me he “just wanted to play video games”). William was - kind of – offended, but more puzzled and a little sad.

# after the party, a few of the older kids decided to go off to Bliss Street and get milkshakes without asking their parents first. The parents of the new-ish kid started wondering where he was, and called around. They eventually asked William, who told the parents the truth. The parents went to find the older kids, who got in big trouble. Now the older kids are mad at William and mean to him, because he “told on them.” He understands that he did the right thing: What if something had happened to them and their parents didn’t know where they were? However his friends are not happy with him and William feels bad.

William seemed very happy with his birthday, however objectively, it was probably the worst we’ve had so far, and I’m still not sure how to deal with all of it. I still have to face the moms involved, and I don’t know how to help William, except to tell him that he did the right thing, using words like “integrity,” and “ character” to instill in him the important points here.

A friend told me, "Be happy you don't have any girls. Then you would have to deal with these kinds of issues ALL THE TIME." Well, I don't have any girls, so please help me out here!