is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
When a kid's party becomes a metaphor for your life, are you deep or in over your head?
Monday, September 24, 2007 
Mama knows how to throw a theme party. Or perhaps more accurately, mama loves to throw a theme party.
Lil E's birthday party and these festivities -- A construction site teeming full of three-year olds, their parents drinking coffee and mimosas, their baby sisters being hidden from the sun (the sun! in late September!) and airborne paint brushes and plastic drills, all in grandma and grandpa's backyard.
It was happy and good and over in two hours. The kids had thoroughly dug, raked, block built, water painted, run, driven toy trucks, chocolate caked and juice boxed themselves out. And isn't a preschool party mostly judged by the number of kids who go home uninjured and ready for a hibernation-like nap?
We needed this. It was a tough weekend at our house, perhaps mostly related to all the reasons I have been quitting things left and right. I'm not sure if this is the space to go into all of that, but I do know that ten laughing (and occasionally tugging at that same plastic drill) does me good. Just looking around at that backyard full of crazy, funny, sweet and icing-mouthed kids and their mommies with babies in slings and dads on the ground knocking over foam blocks and the grandparents watching it all, it made me feel full. And I needed that. Selfishly, sweetly, I needed that.
In the midst of all that construction, I needed to see the joy in rebuilding. And there it was. Here I am.
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