Every woman out there who held sleepovers at her house as a child should go to the phone, immediately, call her mother, and thank her profusely for what she did.  Because now, as mom with a daughter who likes sleepovers, I know the hard work, toil, and strength it takes to get through them.

Bottom line, you can’t sip on wine when you’ve got a house full of nine year old girls.  Sure, the thought will cross your mind a few hundred times, but in your heart of hearts, you know the right thing to do is skip the Cabernet and head straight for the caffeine.  You’ve got a long night ahead of you.

To prepare for a sleepover party, I have learned that you need to gather a few things.  First, prepare a craft that is more complicated than it should be, so that the girls end up making a mess of beads and glue and running off somewhere while you are left to complete seven authentic Native American bear claw necklaces.

Secondly, serve a meal with zero nutritional value.  Vegetables and exotic foods are strictly forbidden at sleepovers.  Put too many out and you’ll need to supply each hyperventilating girl with a paper bag filled with potato chips so she can breathe in and out and extinguish the nasty taste of vitamins in her mouth.  Play it safe: pizza and candy.

You will also need to pre-select a movie that can be played, if desired, at “bedtime.”  Note that “bedtime” is an oxymoron when it comes to sleepovers because there is actually no bed, just a piled up mess of blankets, sleeping bags, pillows, and hairy legs.  And there is no “time” because no matter how hard you try, giggling girls are unstoppable as an earthquake.  To avoid the disappointment of setting a “bedtime,” experiment with a few tricky techniques such as turning off the lights one by one, slowly turning down the volume on the movie, or subliminal hypnosis in the form of buttered popcorn.

No matter which way you choose, the girls will eventually give in to the instinctive requirement of rest, at which point you give in to your instinctive requirement of staying up all night and making sure they’re all safe and sound so that they go home well rested and you can finally have that well deserved cocktail…with a slice of cold leftover pizza and some Pixy Stix.