Lea’s birthday party was a big hit, though the whole “carnival” thing was quickly exposed by her friends as a fraud. One girl, who talks unnervingly like a full-grown adult even though she is six years old, missed the paper-cup pyramid with all three tennis balls, but asked, “Can I have a prize anyway?” And I said yes. What was I supposed to say? “Excuse me, little girl — life isn’t easy. You must EARN your prizes. Now go get those tennis balls and TRY AGAIN. And if you don’t knock over all ten cups, you are going to clean my bathroom.”
Eh. Instead I gave her a plastic Slinky valued at almost 1/100 of a penny. However, this effectively disconnected the carnival games from the prizes, and things quickly got out of control. The kids would try a game, or pretend to try, or not even pretend to try, and then, whatever the result, run to get a prize from the prize table. It’s a good thing we weren’t giving away gold jewelry.
But even though the carnival games had been rendered pointless, the kids were still willing to play them. I made the carnival last a full ninety minutes, and that led us to the cake-and-melted-candy-bars portion of the agenda, and that pretty much segued straight into goodbye. Another birthday survived.
Lea received gifts almost exclusively from the pink aisle of the toy store: Two Barbie dolls; a Barbie pool set and lounge (comes with a package of Barbie Marguerita Mix!); and a pink sports car that is not Barbie-branded but might as well be. I think I’m supposed to dislike this, but in truth I’m okay with it. And even if I was anti-Barbie, anti-Disney princesses, anti-frilly pink dresses, I recognize that trying to steer Lea away from all that stuff would be like fighting the tide. Lea is a girl to the nth degree. She loves dresses, she loves shoes. She LOVES the Disney princesses. None of this means she is dumb, and none of this means she can’t be a science whiz twenty years from now. Despite what some people think, Barbie does not have tentacles that suck out little girls’ brains.
Well, Brain-Sucker Barbie does. But we haven’t bought her that one.
Sunday: I worked in the morning, and then we took the kids duckpin bowling, and then we learned that we are IDIOTS for not calling in advance, because the bowling lanes in Hamden are closed for renovation. Alex was inconsolable. We weren’t sure what to do, so we defaulted to the shopping mall, which cheered Alex up immeasurably. He made a friend in the playground, and they ran around together like happy little goofballs. We also had a brainstorm and took the kids to Krazy City, an indoor arcade with the decibel level of a Seattle grunge band. They have a little kid-sized bowling alley in the back, $5 a game. Alex and Lea both got strikes, and there was much happiness, and we were the best parents EVER… until I said to Alex as we were leaving, “You won!” Lea instantly burst into tears, because she wanted to win. And Alex started crying because Lea was crying. We could have had more net happiness on the car ride home if I had taken the ten dollar bill we spent on bowling and instead ripped it into tiny little shreds. Maybe we’ll wait a few months, or years, or forever, before we go bowling again.
9 Comments
It’s true, embracing girlishness doesn’t by definition steer girls away from being intellectually passionate, or even extremely geeky.
Also: excellent post title.
I knew you’d like that.
Deja vu: didn’t the same thing happen when you tried to go bowling some time ago?
She’s still learning how to be a good sport, but I don’t remember another bowling incident. Usually when we go bowling, we don’t keep score — not to protect Lea from the horrors of losing, but simply because, who cares? At this new arcade, the bowling alley keeps score for you, and for some reason I was compelled to make a big deal out of it. Although by “big deal,” I mean that I said “Hey! You won!” to Alex, in a completely normal tone of voice. That was enough to bring the day to a total halt.
It’s Theatre Day! An “Into the Woods” reference, AND a little Beckett play by Lea!
My most treasured possessions were and still are the dollies (rag dolls) made by my grandmother. We played with them constantly. I now have my sister’s dolls, since we weren’t sure they’d survive being around 2 little boys. We also had Barbies, and grew up to become a statistician and radiologist.
My daughter is 5, and right now I just want to keep her away from the revoltingly slutty Bratz dolls and the seemingly ubiquitous little-girl makeup. Barbie–no problem.
Barbie should cause you no trouble as long as none of your relatives buy Lea a Barbie house with a footprint more than 10% the total square footage of her bedroom, and as long as no one eats her shoes.
Does Lea know about Venus and Serena?
She is aware of the concept of tennis, but not to the point of knowing individual players.