So, my nearly 4 year-old, who changes his mind about eating while he’s chewing is dead set on having his birthday party at a local hotel that has a swimming pool and water slides. He has been set on this for 3 months.

So, here’s the dilemma. The pool only allows 20 people at a party, max. His preschool class has 11 kids, some with siblings. To complicate things a bit more than usual, I’m the teacher of the class. So choosing part of the class feels even worse than it would if it was just about his classmates and not about my students. This also means I know the families well, which I think generally means they’re more likely to come than usual.

But, starting with our family of 4 (I’m fairly sure they won’t count the 1 month-old), that’s only 16 “spots” left for 10 kids and parents. Surely some won’t be able to come, but I’m also a little scared that child, both parents, and little sister show up. A couple of families do this and we’re at our limit.

So...what would you do? He’d rather have the party there with two close friends than move it (which I’m willing to do), but I’d like to have more friends there. Does anyone have awesome wording for the invitation about limiting the number of people coming? Or other sage advice?