My eldest is about to turn seven and the heat is on to produce the perfect party. Not that Kenya is getting at all warm. I’m the one in the kitchen here, trying to whip up the seared-salmon-with-roasted-tomatillo-coulis of kids’ birthday fetes. Because, let’s face it, these parties are as much about impressing the kids as the fancy cookies we serve up at the playgroups are. When I turned seven, my mom invited a few neighbourhood children into our living room. We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Simon Says. We ate hot dogs and cake, and sat in a circle while I opened my gifts. Everybody went home with a pinwheel, a Tootsie Roll and the memory of a great afternoon. But that sweet, simple celebration just wouldn’t cut it today. Not unless the donkey was the real deal, and the part of Simon was played, by special arrangement, by Lance Bass. I have a friend whose kid is a Harry Potter nut. For her birthday this year, she transformed each room in the house into a different store from Diagon Alley. She stayed up night after night sewing black capes and pointy hats for each of the guests to purchase from Madame Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions. She had her husband drill holes in a dozen wooden dowels so that the kids could personalize their magic “wands” at Ollivander’s Wand Shoppe, by stuffing them with unicorn tail hairs, dragon scales and fairy eyes. She even made a seven- (count them: seven) layer birthday cake in the shape of a sorting hat. At the end of it all, each of the party attendees trotted home with their own snitch ball and the bottle of butter beer they had cooked up with Professor Snape in the dungeon. Not too shabby. This mom should have no problem showing her face around the schoolyard. I know another woman who routinely rents one of those huge jumping castles for her kid’s party guests to go nuts in. It costs a few bucks, but it’s a guaranteed winner. Sometimes, there are pony rides. Magicians. Face painters. Rock-climbing. Mad scientists who make putty and set off rockets. Once, I heard about a mom hiring The Wiggles to perform in the backyard. But that might have been an urban myth of the kids’ party circuit. In any event, it all makes its way back to the guests’ mothers, who watch with dread as the party-planning bar inches ever higher. For Kenya, I’m having a couple of “entertainers” drop by with their disco ball and boom box. The youngsters will be instructed on the finer points of hip hop dancing to the stylin’ sounds of Britney and Justin. There will be finger foods and punch. Hair and cosmetic services will be provided prior to the dancing. At the end, the kids will go home with nifty plastic cases filled with little pots of make-up and sparkly jewellery. The whole thing will cost me in the neighbourhood of $300. But it will be worth every dime to see Kenya’s shining face as the celebration swirls around her. And that’s what it’s all about, after all. Not what the other moms will have to say about me and my little party at their coffee klatches. But I do hope the kids remember to mention the disco ball… °°° I think it was the guy in The Graduate who made a pronouncement, way back in the 1960s, that plastics was the business to get into. No kidding. My life, since it became seriously infested with children, has become an exercise in managing small pieces of plastic. Seriously. Not a day goes by when I’m not confronted with the challenge of what to do with myriad bits of colourful crap. We must have 184 Barbie hairbrushes, dozens of tiny tubs of body glitter ferried home in one loot bag after another, a hundred dollar-store golf clubs and balls, hockey sticks and pucks. The other day, my husband was pouring himself a cup of tea and was not in the least surprised when a Monopoly hotel surfed out of the kettle spout. And don’t even get me started on those valuable little add-ons they include in Happy Meals. Then there’s the particular category of plastic-coated paraphernalia that I hold on to for precisely the same reason I keep a drawer of unmatched socks in my bedroom: the tiny Spirograph circles, long since separated from their siblings; the marker lids, whose thirsty companions I continue to believe might still someday appear; the numbered balls from the billiards set Kenya got for Christmas (although I believe I put the table out for recycling some months ago). Once every few months, I feel the weight of the plastic too heavily, and commit myself to getting a handle on it. From there, it’s off to Ikea and Canadian Tire, returning home with all manner of storage solutions. Like a madwoman, I whirl through the family room, dumping one toy bin after another onto the floor. The children are forbidden from entering the playroom during this time: this work, after all, is not kid stuff. Thus confronted with the full bounty of my family’s plastic stash, I set about introducing order. The first step is to confine the mess to categories. There’s the animal section, into which I herd an amazing number of tiny plastic rabbits, sheep, elephants and turtles. There’s the transportation section, for plastic cars, motorbikes, fire trucks and boats. I start an “accessories” category, to house Barbie’s tiny pumps, Madeline’s belts and Polly Pocket’s hand mirrors. I even nominate one plastic tub for “balls” and take great delight in tossing dozens of rubber orbs into its midst. Occasionally, I am faced with great dilemmas, like whether to put Finn’s plastic dress-up shoes with the “girl make believe” stuff or in the “boy imaginative play” bin. And I wrestle constantly with miscellanea whose provenance I am unable to accurately determine. In the end, I assign one large tub “sundry” and vow to return to it later. At the end of it all, I am spent. The ridiculously intricate Kinder egg booty has all been sorted, the checker disks (we’re short two red and one black, but I’m hopeful) have been locked in the “games” box and the Mr. Potato Head ears have been tucked into the rear ends of their hosts. The McDonald’s toys have been sorted into two piles: trash and collectibles. And every last plastic fried egg, Tinker Toy, Mulan figurine and Playmobil coffee mug has been assigned a home. I take a deep breath, filled with the sweetness of order and reason. And then I holler to my husband. “Release the hounds!” The kids, no doubt smelling the promise of freshly systemized plastic, rush in.