Edition: U.S. / Global  So Many Parties, So Little Time; It's
the Madness of the Children's Birthday Celebration Season
Published: May 24, 1998  Birthday parties are normally festive
experiences -- until you go to 50 of them. Every year.  It can
be enough of an ordeal for parents to throw -- and pay for --
the ever more emulous birthday parties of their own children.
But then they're over with until next year. What's really
damaging to parental nerve endings is the obligation to chaperon
their children to the ceaseless parties of their friends and
classmates.  No one, it seems, is more sociable than a 5-year-
old. The party invitations arrive in the mail with a circadian
rhythm. Sometimes two parties a day -- or three. Sometimes four
a week -- or five. Parents with two children can find themselves
jangled escorts to a good three- or four-dozen parties a year,
all of which seem to fall on weekends of ideal weather for
escape, or the one afternoon when free Yankees tickets are
available (and it's Bat Day).  The