Caitlin’s running commentary as she devours a bag of Sponge Bob fruit snacks, but not before carefully examining each one before she plops it in her mouth…

“Patrick is naked!”

“Squidward is NOT naked!”

“Sponge Bob is not naked! But he is naked at night. At night he only wears his underwear!”

This might be a sign that our new guilty parenting indulgence of letting the girls watch Sponge Bob while we finish dinner in peace might be a little out of hand.

I have fought the good fight against the full blown kid birthday party for Caitlin. However, this is her last summer at daycare and she wants to invite her entire class to join in the celebration. It will be a great way for her to enjoy time with some of her friends before they all part ways in August to attend various elementary schools. I keep telling myself that.

We’re having a family cookout on her actual birthday, followed up by a small weekend party at the generic Chuck E. Cheese in town. I’m using the term small lightly, as their are 17 kids in her class. But considering one of my co-workers told me they had 100 guests, including parents, at a pool party for her 6-year-old son last year, a guest list of 17 seems doable, especially when we don’t have to deal with the post-party cleanup. That and the fact that I have a 10 percent off coupon for a party package makes me a happy mama.

But our birthday girl dreams big and I’ve had to reel her in a few times when she starts with the crazy birthday party talk. In the past few weeks she’s told me she wants a pony and then a horse at her party and at one point she was practically begging me to book her party at either a bounce center or Chuck E. Cheese. The bounce center was definitely not an option as it is way on the other side of town. Now there is a Chuck E. Cheese about 20 minutes from our house but why drive so far when we have a lovely generic Chuck E Cheese, which I shall call Chuck E. Lite, at our local mall, which is only 5 minutes away?

So I told Caitlin that Chuck E. Cheese was far, far away from our house. So far that some of her friends might not be able to attend her party if we held it there. Then I pumped up the idea of Chuck E. Lite.

Caitlin’s response, “But mommy, didn’t God build a LOT of Chuck E. Cheese’s?”

The days of me being able to tell her Chuck E. Cheese is practically on another planet are slowly grinding to a halt.

She is so on to me.