It's great to know Betsy has a bunch of loyal friends with whom she can have lots of fun at sleepovers! I'm a little jealous, because most of my life it was hard for me to get along well with more than one or two my classmates, only just before ending the junior high school establishing my faithful gang of four wonderful best friends and me. My younger brother to the contrary has multitude of close mates, whose names my parents can't count, whereas I patiently repeated those of my band until they sticked. Being not really a sociable person I seldom did sleepovers (rather with my cousins than classmates) and rarely showed my outgoing side, and even now I'm displaying it only to small circle of my my family and friends.
In my place it's really hard for non-foreigners to have an unusual name accepted by the administration plus there are many more rules (i. e. it's forbidden to use a grographical or negatively associated name, such as "Warsaw" or "Satan"). The upside is that it's easy to detect a girl's name - in almost all cases it will end in "a". If someone's having problem with choosing a name, there's an official list of approved names, predominantly having also a Saint Patron in Catholic Church. But it's nearly impossible to have in official papers one's name abbreviated or shortened in any way. Hence I may be referred to by my family and friends as "Max"(which I prefer and that's what I say when people ask me how I'd like to be called/written), but in the eyes of administration I'm Maksymilian ("x", just like "v" and "q" can be used in polish alphabet only in words coming from foreign languages). This doesn't mean that I have any grudge against my parents because of my official name. I prefer writing it with "x" to distinguish myself a little. In that way I appear foreign and mysterious (plus when on few occasions I followed that by mentioning I was born in Switzerland, it made me a few times look like a foreigner in the eyes of my countrymen. Each time I clarified the situation, cause I don't have Swiss citizenship, but having unordinary birthplace made few of my classmates a bit envious).
Having an official list of approved names would certainly make things easier here. You wouldn't believe some of the ones people make up. anything goes. As for your name, you'll always be Max with an X to me.
I find myself hoping that Mae's real name is Vivian/ Vivienne. I was named Vivian after my grandmother, and have rarely met others who share my name (in any of its alternate spellings, including Vivien and Vyvyanne), but Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shifted the balance of power by naming their daughter Vivienne.
Personally I think there's something to be said for old-fashioned names that everybody's heard of but nobody uses. You get to have a name that's uniquely yours without being "weird" or putting up with your name being constantly misspelled or mis-pronounced. It only sucks when you're trying to buy "personalized" refrigerator magnets, etc. and your name isn't on the list.
Giving a kid a truly unique name is almost a curse because no one else will ever spell it right for the rest of their lives. I only know one Vivian, so your name is still pretty unique to me.
I love this! I was laying in bed last night trying to sleep (and failing miserably), when I started to think about sleepovers for my 6 year old son. He’s in kindergarten & has started asking about staying at someone’s house, which made me reminisce about the sleepovers I had as a child. These are some of the best years!
Also, that group could stay together forever! My 3 best friends (we’re in our 30s) have known each other since kindergarten, they are my lifelines. Two are godmothers to my daughter & the other is godmother to my son. They’re not going anywhere!! ❤️❤️
And this is why I birthed one child! I got two bonus kids with my husband upgrade. Most of their sleepovers were at grandparents’ big house. We had one for the youngest and I managed to be out of town. Hubby handled 5 or 6 boys like a champ! We both barely survived 6 girls all around 13 years old in a limo and a restaurant for an afternoon. Thank goodness their mani/pedi and mall time was quieter! It was something I’ll never forget, and I hope she doesn’t either. I just hope it’s for different reasons. Girls are a different kind of wild and I’m such a tomboy that I better relate to boy wildness.
Everything you said really brought back memories of so many things when my kids were Betsy's age. Let me just say, girls are entirely different than boys at this stage of the game. Our son had many close friends that came over but generally only one person at a time spent the night and that all stopped by the time they were freshman. They were noisy and smelly at times but all-in-all, a great bunch that son is still friends with, even into his mid-forties. I can't even count how many groomsmen tuxes he's had to rent for each of their weddings.
Our daughter had a best friend through grade school and junior high and they practically spent every waking moment together. They are still good friends at age 42 and were bridesmaids in each other's weddings. There was an unforgettable sleepover in jr high with all the girls she hung out with (maybe 10?) that was awful. Well, great at first when they were filming each other in a fashion show while wearing my old prom dresses, etc. Then somebody said something mean which started a bunch of crying. It went downhill from there, to the point of me going down the stairs and sternly scolding them (i.e. yelling) if they didn't stop that crap I was going to call each one's mother to come get them. They all were best friends again in a heartbeat.
We found that by h.s. age, most of these large sleepovers stopped, due to other activities taking their place, like boyfriends, sports, band, working. It really does end in a couple of years.
Oh, our son has a very unique name that no one ever has. He loves it. Our 1st choice for daughter was a name that was so rampant in her age group that we were happy not to have picked it but went with a different one. Only downside of her name is that there never was/is a pencil or a key chain with her name on it...and to this day she always looks for one. You know, just in case!
Betsy hasn't had one of those dramatic crying sleepover yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Hopefully the meltdown happens at someone else's house. I suspect you're right with sleepovers ending by high school. Once the kids hit driving age, all bets are off.
Our little Alaskan village had a surprisingly large number of dodgy people. Our paperboy son often brought home money with a certain odor to it. Trash cans overflowing with alcohol bottles, drunken fist fights that took the police to settle things down, and worse. So, 99.99% of their “sleepovers” were at our house. I’d make a turkey roasting pan of spaghetti, or crank out a bunch of pizzas, with soda and bags and bags of chips. We had a few rules, don’t hassle the younger brothers, after 2 am, turn down the sound of the video games and voices, and never feed the dog any chips or other people foods. The boys were LOUD! Like could be heard across the street loud. Luckily no one lived near enough to be bothered by it. Boy I miss those days. I don’t know how many times hubs came home to find me peacefully reading a book in the living room with 8-ish boys playing Doom with music turned way up. It stunned him that I could tune it all out.
Tuning out that level of noise is an incredible superpower. Those parties sound like a blast. I hope you still make the entire turkey roasting pan of spaghetti for old time's sake.
Don't dis Rhode Island, it was named by Adrian Block "Roodt Eylandt" and simply means Red Island in Dutch. Yet another reason why we drink.
I never thought about what the girls' "real" names were, I have used a different name for my online presence for many years. I figured you were doing the same.
Sometimes, when I’m really bored (ie, watching the puppies sleep) one of your cartoons or photo, etc. shows up and I find myself wondering what your real names are, lol. I had always assumed waffle wasn’t real but the others are “really” names. I usually think, okay, the first letter is probably the same because “James” would keep it simple so he didn’t forget them and accidentally post their real names. Then I think “maybe they’re completely opposite for the same reason”. I get bored easily. LOL. When I was growing up we moved. A lot. I remember having one best friend when I was 6 and another when I was 17. Matter of fact I’ve always only had one friend at a time. Humm. Anyway, I kind of missed out on the whole stay over thing. I don’t regret it perse, I just wonder what it would have been like. Mom had a short fuse...probably best that I didn’t. Now my BROTHER had a ton of friends in high school and they were always over. But they’re boys. So it’s okay. I might have disliked my brother. A lot.
I can't say I gained any valuable life experiences from my sleepovers, so you probably didn't miss out on much. Mostly, I just learned how to be really tired the next day.
Do your girls every use their XU names rather than their real names?? My teen daughter admitted last year that sometimes she tells new people that her name is Brooklyn rather than her real name. We were shocked! Your girls have a built in alias and I wonder if they use it.
Why is it that people often say, “Son, here are the family heirlooms etc.” but rarely ever say “Daughter, here are the family heirlooms etc.”? Very few people address their daughters as “Daughter”.
Laughing because I could have written much of this! (Well, except that I don’t write as well as you do!). My 14 year old daughter spent much of the past year hanging out with about a dozen + kids around town on weekend/summer evenings. Sometimes when I’d pick her up, she’d ask me to drive some of them home. Then several weeks later, she’d say “what do you mean, you don’t remember Vanessa? You drove her home!”, and I’d think, “Ok, at 11pm, in the dark, a child got into the back seat of my car, most likely said nothing to me (most of my kids’ friends aren’t comfortable speaking English, and I’m not fluent in Swedish) except thank you when they got out, and I’m supposed to recognise them and remember their name?” Umm, NO.
Exactly! How are we supposed to remember details from silent background characters we encounter for thirty seconds at a time? I'm lucky I remember my own name.
I think the stories you share in the comments are great to read and well written! Please keep them up, I love your observations on how things look like on the other side of the Baltic.
In order to have an adult party with the same energy and enthusiasm as a teenage girls' sleepover (especially if parents are involved), all you have to do is not include kids!
It's great to know Betsy has a bunch of loyal friends with whom she can have lots of fun at sleepovers! I'm a little jealous, because most of my life it was hard for me to get along well with more than one or two my classmates, only just before ending the junior high school establishing my faithful gang of four wonderful best friends and me. My younger brother to the contrary has multitude of close mates, whose names my parents can't count, whereas I patiently repeated those of my band until they sticked. Being not really a sociable person I seldom did sleepovers (rather with my cousins than classmates) and rarely showed my outgoing side, and even now I'm displaying it only to small circle of my my family and friends.
In my place it's really hard for non-foreigners to have an unusual name accepted by the administration plus there are many more rules (i. e. it's forbidden to use a grographical or negatively associated name, such as "Warsaw" or "Satan"). The upside is that it's easy to detect a girl's name - in almost all cases it will end in "a". If someone's having problem with choosing a name, there's an official list of approved names, predominantly having also a Saint Patron in Catholic Church. But it's nearly impossible to have in official papers one's name abbreviated or shortened in any way. Hence I may be referred to by my family and friends as "Max"(which I prefer and that's what I say when people ask me how I'd like to be called/written), but in the eyes of administration I'm Maksymilian ("x", just like "v" and "q" can be used in polish alphabet only in words coming from foreign languages). This doesn't mean that I have any grudge against my parents because of my official name. I prefer writing it with "x" to distinguish myself a little. In that way I appear foreign and mysterious (plus when on few occasions I followed that by mentioning I was born in Switzerland, it made me a few times look like a foreigner in the eyes of my countrymen. Each time I clarified the situation, cause I don't have Swiss citizenship, but having unordinary birthplace made few of my classmates a bit envious).
Having an official list of approved names would certainly make things easier here. You wouldn't believe some of the ones people make up. anything goes. As for your name, you'll always be Max with an X to me.
Thank you so much! It means a lot to me.
I find myself hoping that Mae's real name is Vivian/ Vivienne. I was named Vivian after my grandmother, and have rarely met others who share my name (in any of its alternate spellings, including Vivien and Vyvyanne), but Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shifted the balance of power by naming their daughter Vivienne.
Personally I think there's something to be said for old-fashioned names that everybody's heard of but nobody uses. You get to have a name that's uniquely yours without being "weird" or putting up with your name being constantly misspelled or mis-pronounced. It only sucks when you're trying to buy "personalized" refrigerator magnets, etc. and your name isn't on the list.
Giving a kid a truly unique name is almost a curse because no one else will ever spell it right for the rest of their lives. I only know one Vivian, so your name is still pretty unique to me.
Seems like everyone knows one Vivian, and few people know two or three. ;-) I think that's just the right level of uniqueness.
I love this! I was laying in bed last night trying to sleep (and failing miserably), when I started to think about sleepovers for my 6 year old son. He’s in kindergarten & has started asking about staying at someone’s house, which made me reminisce about the sleepovers I had as a child. These are some of the best years!
Also, that group could stay together forever! My 3 best friends (we’re in our 30s) have known each other since kindergarten, they are my lifelines. Two are godmothers to my daughter & the other is godmother to my son. They’re not going anywhere!! ❤️❤️
Your friend group beat the odds! That really is remarkable. You can't put a price on that kind of staying power. You must be quite the bunch.
And this is why I birthed one child! I got two bonus kids with my husband upgrade. Most of their sleepovers were at grandparents’ big house. We had one for the youngest and I managed to be out of town. Hubby handled 5 or 6 boys like a champ! We both barely survived 6 girls all around 13 years old in a limo and a restaurant for an afternoon. Thank goodness their mani/pedi and mall time was quieter! It was something I’ll never forget, and I hope she doesn’t either. I just hope it’s for different reasons. Girls are a different kind of wild and I’m such a tomboy that I better relate to boy wildness.
Girls definitely are a different kind of wild. I'm not sure I'm built to handle it. We'll find out if my house is soon enough.
Everything you said really brought back memories of so many things when my kids were Betsy's age. Let me just say, girls are entirely different than boys at this stage of the game. Our son had many close friends that came over but generally only one person at a time spent the night and that all stopped by the time they were freshman. They were noisy and smelly at times but all-in-all, a great bunch that son is still friends with, even into his mid-forties. I can't even count how many groomsmen tuxes he's had to rent for each of their weddings.
Our daughter had a best friend through grade school and junior high and they practically spent every waking moment together. They are still good friends at age 42 and were bridesmaids in each other's weddings. There was an unforgettable sleepover in jr high with all the girls she hung out with (maybe 10?) that was awful. Well, great at first when they were filming each other in a fashion show while wearing my old prom dresses, etc. Then somebody said something mean which started a bunch of crying. It went downhill from there, to the point of me going down the stairs and sternly scolding them (i.e. yelling) if they didn't stop that crap I was going to call each one's mother to come get them. They all were best friends again in a heartbeat.
We found that by h.s. age, most of these large sleepovers stopped, due to other activities taking their place, like boyfriends, sports, band, working. It really does end in a couple of years.
Oh, our son has a very unique name that no one ever has. He loves it. Our 1st choice for daughter was a name that was so rampant in her age group that we were happy not to have picked it but went with a different one. Only downside of her name is that there never was/is a pencil or a key chain with her name on it...and to this day she always looks for one. You know, just in case!
Betsy hasn't had one of those dramatic crying sleepover yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Hopefully the meltdown happens at someone else's house. I suspect you're right with sleepovers ending by high school. Once the kids hit driving age, all bets are off.
Our little Alaskan village had a surprisingly large number of dodgy people. Our paperboy son often brought home money with a certain odor to it. Trash cans overflowing with alcohol bottles, drunken fist fights that took the police to settle things down, and worse. So, 99.99% of their “sleepovers” were at our house. I’d make a turkey roasting pan of spaghetti, or crank out a bunch of pizzas, with soda and bags and bags of chips. We had a few rules, don’t hassle the younger brothers, after 2 am, turn down the sound of the video games and voices, and never feed the dog any chips or other people foods. The boys were LOUD! Like could be heard across the street loud. Luckily no one lived near enough to be bothered by it. Boy I miss those days. I don’t know how many times hubs came home to find me peacefully reading a book in the living room with 8-ish boys playing Doom with music turned way up. It stunned him that I could tune it all out.
Tuning out that level of noise is an incredible superpower. Those parties sound like a blast. I hope you still make the entire turkey roasting pan of spaghetti for old time's sake.
Don't dis Rhode Island, it was named by Adrian Block "Roodt Eylandt" and simply means Red Island in Dutch. Yet another reason why we drink.
I never thought about what the girls' "real" names were, I have used a different name for my online presence for many years. I figured you were doing the same.
Roodt Eylandt has a nice ring to it. It would also make a fine girl's name.
Sometimes, when I’m really bored (ie, watching the puppies sleep) one of your cartoons or photo, etc. shows up and I find myself wondering what your real names are, lol. I had always assumed waffle wasn’t real but the others are “really” names. I usually think, okay, the first letter is probably the same because “James” would keep it simple so he didn’t forget them and accidentally post their real names. Then I think “maybe they’re completely opposite for the same reason”. I get bored easily. LOL. When I was growing up we moved. A lot. I remember having one best friend when I was 6 and another when I was 17. Matter of fact I’ve always only had one friend at a time. Humm. Anyway, I kind of missed out on the whole stay over thing. I don’t regret it perse, I just wonder what it would have been like. Mom had a short fuse...probably best that I didn’t. Now my BROTHER had a ton of friends in high school and they were always over. But they’re boys. So it’s okay. I might have disliked my brother. A lot.
I can't say I gained any valuable life experiences from my sleepovers, so you probably didn't miss out on much. Mostly, I just learned how to be really tired the next day.
Do your girls every use their XU names rather than their real names?? My teen daughter admitted last year that sometimes she tells new people that her name is Brooklyn rather than her real name. We were shocked! Your girls have a built in alias and I wonder if they use it.
I’m wondering if those beautiful girls reference, in terms of decibels, the volume of your fun game nights?!!!
Our game nights, which are loud are their own, are like a quiet night in a library compared to a sleepover.
Haha!
You should be able to use a generic ‘hello there young lady’ for a few more years. And, should the need arise, a simple ‘hey my man’ should work.
For my own kids, I've recently reverted to, "Yes, my child?" Easier than mixing up all four names in a hurry. Works in all circumstances.
Why is it that people often say, “Son, here are the family heirlooms etc.” but rarely ever say “Daughter, here are the family heirlooms etc.”? Very few people address their daughters as “Daughter”.
Laughing because I could have written much of this! (Well, except that I don’t write as well as you do!). My 14 year old daughter spent much of the past year hanging out with about a dozen + kids around town on weekend/summer evenings. Sometimes when I’d pick her up, she’d ask me to drive some of them home. Then several weeks later, she’d say “what do you mean, you don’t remember Vanessa? You drove her home!”, and I’d think, “Ok, at 11pm, in the dark, a child got into the back seat of my car, most likely said nothing to me (most of my kids’ friends aren’t comfortable speaking English, and I’m not fluent in Swedish) except thank you when they got out, and I’m supposed to recognise them and remember their name?” Umm, NO.
Exactly! How are we supposed to remember details from silent background characters we encounter for thirty seconds at a time? I'm lucky I remember my own name.
I think the stories you share in the comments are great to read and well written! Please keep them up, I love your observations on how things look like on the other side of the Baltic.
How lovely of you to say so! I enjoy your comments too!
Thanks!
I agree! I love reading other people‘s stories too in the Comments!
In order to have an adult party with the same energy and enthusiasm as a teenage girls' sleepover (especially if parents are involved), all you have to do is not include kids!
They seem to be having a blast as well. I hope I can keep up.