With the exception of the ant hill, I'm two for two

Well, I’m two for two.

Last month I made it through my second birthday party and even though the previous one I had hosted was an overnight event involving nine and 10-year-olds that lasted 19 hours, I was more stressed out about how to keep a group of five and six-year-olds occupied for two hours.

I guess that’s because I didn’t know if this group would be expecting organized games. Were they the red light green light, musical chair, pin the tail on the donkey generation?

It had been a while since I had hosted a party at home. And much longer since I’d done one for little people. My other son’s parties have involved floor hockey, swimming and ice hockey where all I needed to be was on cue with the cake.

Keeping these little people busy for two hours seemed so much more overwhelming. I had to be creative, although birthday boy proved to be of little help. “What kind of games do you want to play?” I asked. “Game Cube, Wii…” he said.

No, not those games, I told him.

Birthday party games, like bingo. “I hate bingo,” he spat out.

Of course you do.

So as the kids started arriving I could feel my anxiety settling in. I had a piñata hanging in the garage and a “craft centre” laid out on my kitchen table, complete with 10 cups of Play-Doh and piles of construction paper and stickers. The craft centre, I figured, would keep them occupied for about half an hour.

It kept their interest for about four minutes. They made it quite clear they would rather be outside in the tent, playing in the tree house, or downstairs on the Game Cube doing unorganized things.

Go for it, I told them, grateful that at least my niece and my babysitter’s son got 10 minutes of enjoyment out of my craft centre. Which is about how long the piñata lasted too.

Twenty minutes down, 80 more to go. “Want to play red light green light?” I said half out loud, expecting my lame suggestion to be booed down. To my delight they wanted to play. And we played hide and go seek too – the old birthday party standards.

Quite pleased with myself I grabbed a spot on a hill and sat down, capturing all of the fun on my camera. That’s when I looked down and saw that I had sat in an anthill.

Two acres of lawn and I have to sit in the one square foot that is occupied by hundreds of ants, which are now making their way up my leg.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

I’m not sure what those poor kids thought I was expecting of them now when they saw me leaping to my feet, doing all these crazy dances.

After all, there wasn’t even any music.