Let sleeping volcanoes lie

"Grampa has to comb my hair because he's the gentlest," insisted my granddaughter, and so she sat quietly in his lap while he worked a wide-toothed comb through her unruly curls. It was a wonderful moment of peace and togetherness--the last quiet moment we'd experience all day.

Soon small people started arriving for my granddaughter's birthday party--five years old already! I'm not sure how many small people were present because they never stayed still long enough to be counted, but they appeared to outnumber the Mongol hordes. Here, though, is the key to maintaining sanity at a five-year-old's birthday party: keep the adult-to-child ratio on the high side. When the ravening hordes are surrounded by a surfeit of moms, dads, grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles, the party is less likely to result in any 911 calls.

Which is not to say that the party was not explosive. It was, after all, a volcano-themed party, so explosions were on the menu--literally: my daughter made a volcano-shaped cake (filled with strawberry jam magma) and topped it with sparklers. And then, of course, there was the other volcano, the home-made volcano she'd crafted from foam pads and paper mache with a vase embedded in the middle to control the eruption. Before the eruption, though, my son-in-law the engineer explained to the awestruck children the chemical reaction between vinegar and baking soda (which he had helpfully written out on a whiteboard), and their ability to correctly respond "carbon dioxide!" on cue attests to his teaching skills.

More volcanoes appeared among the gifts, from volcano books to volcano-constructing kits, and children erupted into unstructured play with bubbles and sidewalk chalk. While their attempts to "dig a volcano" in the rock pile under the deck suggest a basic misunderstanding about how volcanoes work, the effort kept them happy.

So we all had a lot of fun and eventually the little people all left, except for the three who live in the house. The presence of new toys inspired a few more eruptions as the day wore on, but, thankfully, bedtime comes for everyone, even birthday girls with unruly curls. 

Sleeping children always look so peaceful, but it's best to think of them as dormant volcanoes: you never know when they'll erupt, and when they do, it's always memorable.