Go Cubs Go

As Iowa Cubs fans and former Chicago residents, we were excited to see the parent team Chicago Cubs make the World Series this year.  Grandma and Papa sent us Cubs sugar cookies from Chicago and we might even have stayed up way too late past our bedtime to watch on a school night (except for Julia, who usually is the night owl but for some reason fell asleep early that night; perhaps one of those people who thinks baseball is boring?)  I kept telling the boys that they would remember this night for the rest of their lives.

Pony Party

We had Julia's 6th birthday party this weekend.  I viewed it as my grand finale of hosting big group birthday parties.  By my count, this is my fifteenth large birthday party that we have hosted for the kids, and while I love them, I feel like I am ready to be done with the big parties and change over to parties with a handful of close friends.  At least until Julia hits junior high and the ten-girl slumber parties start up.  The reason why we invite the whole class or all the girls in her class is to teach the kids the value of including everyone. Especially when they are young and just getting to know the kids in their class, I think it is great to give everyone the chance to be together to practice social skills and make sure that no one feels left out.  The downside is that it is nutty for me as the host parent.  I feel like I am always running around taking someone to the bathroom, organizing the opening of the presents or cutting, passing out and cleaning up ten plates of cake with goopy frosting and a side of dripping ice cream. I never get a chance to talk with the other parents or family guests who are there, which leaves me feeling rude and frazzled at the end of the day.

So what do you do for a six year old kindergarten girl that hasn't been done before?  A pony party!  We had the party at the Jester Park Equestrian Center and got so lucky with a gorgeous, 75 degree day in November.  There was some drama leading up to the party, as the facility was insistent that it would only allow ten children to ride the ponies. I explained to the person handling the reservation that I did not want to exclude any of the girls in the class from being invited to the party, and there were 12.  The woman was unmoved.  If you invite more, she said, only ten will ride.  I had gotten the party reservation only ten days in advance due to someone else's cancellation, so I figured the odds were slim that more than 7 or 8 girls tops would come with such short notice.  Um, wrong.  Ten of the 12 who were invited RSVP'ed to come.  Adding Julia, we had eleven.  I called repeatedly to try to speak with someone, but the phone line just maddeningly rolls to voicemail. Over and over again.  Finally, on the morning of the party, Julia and I drove up to the facility to try to talk with someone.  And they were insistent that one person could not ride. When I asked why, they said that it is too hard on the ponies and they did not have enough staff to accommodate one extra rider.  I pulled out my best lawyer negotiation skills, offering to have the girls ride in two groups for half as long or even paying extra for Julia to ride before or after the party.  No dice.  The woman who tried to explain her position to me said "surely you understand why we cannot accommodate this."  My response: "not really, to be honest."

I explained to Julia that as the host of the party, her job was to make sure that everyone had a good time and be gracious enough to allow the others to ride and to give up her chance to ride.  For the first two minutes after she heard the news, I told her she could take pictures of her friends riding the ponies and she was reluctantly considering it.  I promised I would sign her up for riding lessons instead.  At one point, she said she would agree not to ride but only if I paid her ten dollars.  I think she thought I would balk at what she perceived to be a very high dollar amount, but when I readily agreed in my desperation to smooth things over (not something I am proud of), she backed out of the deal.  And the more she thought about it, the madder she got, and she. was. not. having. it.  I have to say that I was sympathetic to the idea that it would be hard for a six year old to watch everyone else ride and not have the fun.  Especially when it is her own birthday party.  I remember when I was eight I had an ice skating birthday party that was magical to me.  I cannot imagine how I would have felt about it if I had been forced to sit in the stands watching my friends skate.  Julia was angry at me for excluding her from her own birthday party and I was kicking myself for turning what should have been a wonderful day into something that was looking pretty awful.

After hours of sobbing and her insistence that she would not go to her own party, I finally was able to reach someone on the phone who agreed to call her supervisor for an exception.  The supervisor called and made an accommodation and all was right with the world again.  And after all of that, one of the girls who RSVP'ed did not show up and we only had ten anyway.  After the party, I saw that I had missed a text from her mom the night before saying she wouldn't be there.  No doubt it came in while the boys were playing a game on my phone and they just dismissed it.  Pass the wine, please.

But after seeing the ten smiling faces at the party and how much fun the girls had together, all of the planning and the drama fades away and it becomes worth it to me to go through the hassle for the wonderful memories.  My girl greeted her new kindergarten friends with giant hugs and a "Howdy!" (her own idea about the appropriate greetings for guests at a cowgirl-themed birthday party.) The girls colored patiently on the coloring sheets I had printed to bring as time fillers for the beginning of the party while everyone arrived (a little trick I learned around birthday party #5 or so; it worked much better with this group of kindergarten girls than it ever did for their brothers and their friends at the same age.) The girls rode the ponies, groomed the ponies and did a pony craft.  Julia was so proud to be able to lead the line to ride the ponies and chose one of the biggest, Beans, as her mount.  She happily rode him around the ring, urging him to go around the cones and patting him when he complied.

In terms of presents, it was Shopkins, Shopkins and more Shopkins, much to Julia's delight.  Although when I asked her what her favorite part about the party was, she said it was getting a Barbie mermaid doll.  Ah, the allure of mermaids is powerful. Maybe the idea for a (smaller!) birthday party next year?  At the end of the party, without any prompting, Julia stood up on her chair and announced to all of the guests: "Excuse me, I have something to say!  Thank you so much for coming to my party! I had a wonderful time."  A natural performer, that one.  And it made six seem so grown up.

    

Sensational Six

Jules turned six this week.  And with that, my youngest is no longer so young anymore.  We are inching into middle childhood, which I hear is the sweet spot of parenting.  Everyone can brush their own teeth, clear their own dishes and (carefully) pour their own milk.  Not that they don't ask me to get them a glass of water on a regular basis.  Julia is also easily able to dress herself and make her bed cheerfully, which puts her a step ahead of her brothers in those departments.

At six, Julia is learning and growing so much, both physically and in her learning.  Her legs and arms have suddenly gotten so long and graceful.  She can count to 100 and do addition to 10.  She loves to write and sound out words much more than her brothers used to be interested in doing.  These days I frequently find her bent over a paper and pencil, deep in concentration as she sounds out "Sk-eye-ee" Sky! (Although of course she spells it sci) or "Kah-aaa--tttt" Cat!

Julia can do a somersault, turn a halfway there cartwheel and score a goal in soccer.  In soccer, she is especially good at defending and grits her teeth as she runs down the forwards from the other team, delighting in kicking the ball out of bounds before they can score.  Her coloring is superb and people often comment on how beautifully she colors pictures in school or on her own. She seems to enjoy art and creating with her hands.  Her fine motor skills at this age far exceed those of her brothers at the same age.

Some of her favorite activities right now are soccer, swimming, gymnastics and dance.  For books, we just finished reading the entire Winnie the Pooh collection, the Little House on the Prairie Books and she is a fan of the Ivy and Bean book series.  For toys, it is Legos and Little Live Pets, which are motorized tiny animals that run on batteries and can do adorably endearing things without requiring me to feed them or clean out their cage.  Julia had gotten a mouse last spring from some friends and loved chasing it around the house.  For her birthday, she requested the parakeet.  It can sing and whistle, and best of all, it will record your voice and play it back in a bird's voice so that it sounds like you are teaching it to talk.  She tied a ribbon to the parakeet's leg "so that it can't fly away" and a string around the cage and carried it everywhere with her for the last week.  The bird went to brothers' football games and to the grocery store, and Julia proudly showed it off to anyone who would pay attention to it.

Her new toy obsession is Shopkins.  Before her birthday she had zero Shopkins.  A week before she turned six, I took her to Von Maur (a local department store) to shop for her holiday dress, and she spotted a Shopkins candy dispenser called Lolli Poppins near the cash register.  "Oh mommy, please, please please can I have a Shopkins?"  She told me her best friend has several and that they discuss them at recess.  I told her that I was not buying it now since her birthday was so close but that she could use her allowance to buy the $5 toy.  The saleperson at the checkout told us Julia's eyes were shining with excitement and she hopped up and down as she clutched Lolli Poppins to her chest.  Since then, she has received the Shopkins Candy Sweet Shop, the Super Market Checkout and the Ice Cream truck from family and friends for her birthday and goes crazy with delight as she opens them. I think Shopkins are in the same boat with Legos in that both have so many tiny pieces to keep track of and clean up.  They drive me half mad.  But then I remind myself that one day in the not-so-distant future, I will miss these days of stepping on Shopkins all over the house.

 

How Does a Cow Do Math?

 With a cow-culator, of course!  That one was AJ's trick-or-treat joke this year.  David used the classic "Why did the football coach go to the bank?  To get his quarterback!" Julia's joke varied, but was usually a goofy, made-up-on-the spot version of a knock knock joke, although sometimes she used the standby "Knock, knock..Who's there?...Boo!...Boo hoo? Don't cry, it's only a joke!"

The kids were all in this year with trick-or-treating.  I would guess that we probably walked about four miles, and we stayed out the entire two hours allowed.  The boys did not care that the World Series game with the Cubs started halfway through, they were more interested in candy.  "It only happens once every 365 days, mom!" David told me.  I tried to explain that the Cubs in the World Series is much more rare, but sometimes you just have to live things to understand it.  I did notice that after 7:00 when the Cubs game started, some houses just put bowls of candy on the front porch with a "help yourself" sign and stopped answering the door so that they could watch the game.  We could see through their windows that they were home and the t.v. was on.

Julia answered the door as the light-up rainbow fairy for the first hour with my mom.  Julia's costume this year was quite involved with a long, floor-length skirt and giant wings that were always getting stuck in the door.  And don't forget pink hair clip-ins.  By the time we stopped by halfway through trick-or-treating to warm up, Julia had changed into my mom's costume, a much more manageable cat with a black cape.  And she decided to go out trick-or-treating with us for the last hour, a first for her, the one who loves to answer the door.  AJ brought his best buddy, Aaron, with us this year, so it was the Packers Cheesehead and two Bengals football players.  I was amazed to see how many guys in our neighborhood have televisions in their garages.  They were handing out candy while watching Sunday night football, and Aaron got updates on the Packers game as we went along.

By the time we got home around 8:15, the kids were almost too tired to eat any candy.  Almost. They did lay their heads on the table while we ate dinner and went to bed without any protest.

An apple in the grass we discovered while trick-or-treating.  At first I thought someone accidentally dropped it, but then we saw more, and I think someone was handing out a healthy Halloween snack that some trick-or-treaters promptly chucked out of their loot sacks.  To his credit, David said it made him sad to see the apples, as it was both wasteful and might make the person handing them out feel bad.  

Costume #2 of the night.  

The kids sorted their loot, all the better for inventorying and trading.