Happy Marley... and Not-So-Happy Marley

Well, it has been an eventful couple of days here. Marley is turning seven tomorrow!!!!!! To celebrate, we gave her a big birthday party at one of those party places. They have giant inflatable stuff, air hockey, ping pong, etc. It is only your party there for a two and a half hour time period and the staff handles everything. It is nice and if you are going to invite a lot of kids, a great way to go. So, we go'd that way! We invited all of her first grade classmates (11 kids) along with their siblings, plus a couple of friends from church.

Here is a picture of Marley's hamster. I'm showing you this because I gave it to the bakery to use to make her cake. I just wanted them to have pink icing with white stripes to make it look like a cage and then I asked them to draw a hamster in white icing.


THIS is what we got! Isn't it great? Marley was thrilled and I was pretty impressed.




While you are waiting for everyone to arrive, you hang out in the lobby area. There are fun house mirrors:


And big floor pillows:



Here's Marley playing air hockey. I don't know if you can see how flushed her cheeks are. She'd already been up and down the giant slide quite a few times. I don't have any good pictures of the slide, but it is just like they have at carnivals: Tall and Steep. The kids l-o-v-e it!



By now, she was ready to move on to the room which houses the pizza and presents.


See look! We're hosting a party and we have time to sit around and have someone take a picture of us.



Oh wait! There's the giant slide. You can't see the whole thing, but you get the general idea. There is another inflatable right next to it with ropes and an obstacle course. So, here are all the kids from the party. Because Marley is in a multiage class, these kids all tend to know each other really well. There is a lot of crossover with sports, scouts, birthday parties. It is quite the little community.


Here she is, blowing out her candles!


And the best part? The presents of course. A scrapbook kit is perfect for her. All in all, she really loved everything she was given. There was one odd present, but I managed to convince her that it could be put to good use.



That was Wednesday and we sailed through Thursday just fine. Unfortunately, I didn't know what this morning would hold. She's been pretty fussy about going to school for weeks now. Between minor bribes, minor threats and some distractions, we've been managing. This morning, it all fell apart.

I've known that this last stretch of school was going to be a challenge. I've discussed it with her teacher and we both agreed that if Marley needed a day off of school here and there to get through it, we should do that. However, when she is in the middle of pitching a fit, I don't want to reward her with the day off. That leaves Paul and me to be more intentional about her getting it before she falls apart. Um, well, we didn't make it today.

Paul "placed" her in the car this morning but she cried the whole way there. Usually, she stops crying. She'll complain but still go along to school without too much hassle. This morning she would not get out of the car. She cried and cried. I said everything I knew to say. She said everything she thought would keep me from making her go. Finally, short of physically dragging her out of the car and carrying her to school--which I would do, except she is too big for me now--I chose to give her the choice of going to school or going home and sitting on a chair facing the wall until it was time for school to be out. She could get up to use the restroom. That's it.

Well, she chose the chair. I knew she would end up freaking out about it, but I thought she would eventually decide to go to school.

No Such Luck.

I put her at the wall around 8:45 a.m.

We started out on a cushy ottoman.


This lasted for a while until she decided to keep pushing it away from the wall. After being warned, we moved to a metal folding chair. I did let her have her blanket, but no pillow or toys or books.



She started her up and down dance at one point which necessitated the switch to the "jail" chair. This is one of our dining room chairs which has "bars" making it harder for her to slide out.


She fell asleep about 1:00.


It is not almost 2:30. She'll sleep through the rest of her "sentence." In addition to the seating arrangements being changed up a few times, there were many tears, a googolplex of "What time is its" with some tantrum throwing, escape attempts and dagger-throwing glances along the way.

My head hurts. My back hurts. My patience is spent.

I hope we don't have to do this again. Just a few weeks until school lets out.