Chubby Bunny

So when your 7-year-old says to you, just after dinner, “Mama, my tummy kind of hurts,” you should just go to bed as soon as the kids are down because are sure as God made little green apples you’re going to end up holding down the couch in the wee hours of the morning watching her hurl her little guts out into a mixing bowl.

Sadly, I have not learned this lesson yet.  And I woke up at 4:30am coughing, was up til after 5am doing same, then struggled to drift back off just in time for her to come get me, all pitiful and sad, at 6am.

The Lovely Rhonda went for a check-up this morning unrelated to the crappy cold we both have.  I’ve had mine for about a month, she’s had hers two weeks.  I don’t begrudge her, but after the nurse practitioner heard her hacking today she got a nebulizer treatment and an inhaler for her malady, whereas I have only non-work-friendly codeine cough syrup for mine.  Oh, and Mucinex.  I am changing my primary care provider to hers but can’t get in for another week.  Mine just keeps saying things like, Yep that’s a real stinker of a cold.  Meanwhile I’m still coughing up the remainder of my one raggedly lung (or so it feels like).

Last night we looked up birthday party games for 5-year-olds on account of we have a freshly minted one in our very household.  The youngest of the Spawn had her actual whelping anniversary yesterday, and the event of the season is scheduled for this Saturday: pinata party with games, at home because we grow weary of spending minimum of $200 on shitty pizza and cheap plastic prizes at Vegas for Tots (aka Chuck E. Cheese).  We can spend a fourth of that on goodie bags, cake decorations, and beer for the grown-ups and have more fun without leaving the Swamp.  Yay!

Anyway we settled on a few very simple games: balloon race, wherein you clasp an inflated balloon between your knees and race to the finish, or fall over laughing.  Tail Stompers, wherein you attach a crepe-paper-streamer tail to each child and let them “enjoy their tails” and also try to stomp one another’s tails off for valuable prizes. A fishing game of the sort you find at school carnivals, wherein the child throws a clothespin fishing line over a barrier of some kind, behind which helpful older children attach some kind of trifle to the clothespin and give the line a tug.  Hilarity ensues.

We’re also having them decorate their own cupcakes with candies and sprinkles rather than have a store-bought decorated cake.  Those cakes cost twenty-five bucks.  Let the frugality begin!  Then again we may end up spending the difference in stain spray.

One of the games we did not pick, and believe me it was torture to have to pass it up, was a game called “Chubby Bunny.”  This involves giving each participant two marshmallows, one to stuff into each cheek, and requiring them to state in turn, “I am a chubby bunny” intelligibly and without laughing.  Those who make it through round one are handed two more marshmallows to stuff into their cheeks and the process is repeated until all but one participant is eliminated.

The thought of a room full of children ages 4-7 all giggling madly and trying to say “I am a chubby bunny” with marshmallows in their cheeks is practically enough to drive me to pee my desk chair and were it not for the warning that was posted, I would totally have voted for this.  But there was a sobering disclaimer at the head of the web page: evidently there have been at least two deaths attributed to this game, one adult and one child.  I cannot think of a more senseless way to die than to suffocate on a marshmallow at a child’s birthday party.  More sordid, perhaps, but not more senseless.