Birthday Boo-Hoos

After staging a number of birthday parties for the boys, I'm really starting to become annoyed at parental inconsideration in not confirming attendance (or lack thereof) for birthday celebrations. #2's 5th birthday party is Saturday -- we invited 4 children, as we prefer small parties. The invitations were very clear about needing to confirm attendance and gave several different ways to manage this.

One parent has confirmed their child's attendance -- a parent I see several times a day so this was a pretty easy "yea or nay" to receive. Of the others, I spoke to two of the children: one gave a very confusing and garbled explanation culminating in him not coming to the party (though I'm still not entirely sure what the reason was), the other nodded her head 'yes' and looked really confused. I'm suspecting a language issue here -- this has happened in the past with #1's birthdays.

The remaining child initially wouldn't accept the invite, stating bluntly to my son that girls don't go to boys' parties and left her invite in the lunch room on purpose. He came home from school very upset about this that day and I did a 'Mom' thing. I phoned the school. Thanks to the beauty of a very small school population, the invite was found and made it into her backpack for the trip home the next day but I've no idea if she actually gave it to her parents. This is a shame as #2 chatters about her everyday and really thinks a lot of her.

Fortunately the one child we do know is coming has been #2's best friend for a couple years now, so all is not lost.

I can't help being annoyed, though, as it makes planning very difficult and is so very dissapointing for #2 to wait and wait for the party -- not knowing who will be coming -- only to have one child arrive.