It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like President's Day

It’s 7:13 on a Monday morning. I am not preparing two lunches. I am not beginning my gentle suggestions that we get dressed for school. I am not slurping and slopping coffee all over myself because I am clumsily multi-tasking breakfast prep for three children and maybe a bowl of cereal for me. I am not fooling my daughter into thinking that her hair is not being brushed while in reality I am trying to tame her lovely, but wooly bedhead mane. I am not surprising anyone with my bizarre (daily) request that we brush our teeth before we leave the house. I am not getting dressed in my running clothes wondering how in the heck I’m going to muster the energy to make my actual run after our morning preschool drop-off race. No. Not today.

It’s President’s Day.

According to Heath, my five year old, President’s Day is his favorite holiday. He hates (his word, not mine) Valentine’s Day, because it’s for the girls. Stella, my three old, hates Boweltimes’ Day (her word, but I think I’m going to make this one mine), because, well, Heath hates it. New Year’s Eve is a little scary due to the late-night fireworks. Christmas Day is an anticipatory, sensory overload destined to leave a five year old in a puddle of tears and snowman wrapping paper wreckage loudly requesting that we not have Christmas next year. And Heath took issue with the pilgrims when he dared to wonder, where did all the Indians go?

Apparently President’s Day is benign enough to celebrate. When I told the kids they would not have school on Monday, Heath suggested they spend the night at my parent’s house Sunday night and have a President’s Day party on Monday. I wasn’t sure what a President’s Day party was going to look like. Do you decorate with balloons? Eat marble cake shaped like the Oval Office? Take turns discussing your favorite and least favorite President and why? Play a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey (and Elephant, Whig, Boston Tea…)? Then it occurred to me that what we were really talking about was a nearly kid-free night for my husband and me. I could leave the party details in the capable and more than willing hands of the grandparents.

So what on earth did we do with our President’s Eve? We ate take-out Thai in an oh, so quiet house. Baby Forest sat in his high chair and enjoyed rice cereal and uninterrupted cooing and oohing and ahhing from both mom and dad. Baby was asleep by 7:30. Ice cream was consumed in bed while we watched something on TV, but I can’t remember what it was, and I was asleep by 9:05.

It’s 8:12 on President’s Day morning. Baby Forest is beside me on the bed kicking his feet around and making baby dinosaur noises. I should probably start baking 44 cupcakes, iced to look like each President. Washington will be easy, but I’m struggling to recall what #13 Millard Fillmore looks like.

Rexerella

The Ropko household has broken out in a winter rash of birthday parties. They have bounced in castles, bowled, played video games, made magic wands with sticks and glitter glue, been repeatedly told to not open someone else’s present, and eaten their season’s quota of cake and icing. Heath, our five year old in his fourth year at the same preschool, is a birthday party veteran. However, Stella, our three year old in her first year at preschool, has experienced a variety of celebration firsts. She was not just an invitee by way of being a younger sibling. She partied hearty at not one, but two affairs in one weekend. And she got some rare one on one time with Mommy, her party chaperone.

The Saturday party was for a boy preschool pal. While her other friends from school bounced and munched on pretzels and grapes, Stella preferred to sit in my lap and attempt to braid my hair. I had a moment of comparing. No one else is sitting with their mom. Should I make her get in to bounce? I’ll just feel her forehead—maybe she’s coming down with something. Nope.

As I mulled my daughter’s clingy behavior over in my head, a fellow mommy noted, “Stella, you probably don’t get a lot of time with just mom. I wouldn’t let her go either.”

The mom was right. As a matter of fact, I was suddenly unable to recall a time when I’d been with just Stella since our third baby was born in September. I kissed her on the neck and sniffed her hair. Eventually, a few trucks were brought out to zoom and roll about on the floor. Unable to resist the sound of a fire truck’s engine, Stella released her mother-grip and joined the crew, and I made a mental note to carve in (somewhere, somehow, whatever it takes) Just Stella Time.

So when Sunday quickly rolled around and the Who’s taking Stella to the party and who is going to stay home with Heath and Baby Forest was on the table, I eagerly agreed, ready to capitalize on my newfound understanding that a girl needs time with her mommy.

This all-girl gathering was honoring yet another preschool mate and the invitation suggested one wear Royal Attire. I was lucky to get Stella out of her Scooby Doo pajamas, and so as to not completely spoil the mood, I’m pretty sure I didn’t attempt to brush out the blond bird’s nest resting on the back of her head.

It was a lovely tea party, complete with fairy wands made out of pretzel rods and star-shaped rice krispy treats, and princess juice served in delicate tea cups. The Princesses gathered round a craft table and made magic wands and decorated jewelry boxes (or as Stella called them, Lightsabers and Pirate’s Treasure Chests). And buckets overflowed with Princess costumes and fairy wings and glass and glittery slippers and beaded necklaces in brilliant reds and yellows and pinks and purples for guests to play dress-up.

As the girls gathered round to choose their attire, Stella hung back and grabbed onto my hand.
“Want to pick out a dress?” I suggested, gently guiding her toward the bucket where two girls exchanged a yellow Belle dress for a blue Cinderella gown.

Stella wouldn’t budge. Instead, she yanked on my arm and said, “Come wif me.”

I held her hand and walked over to the dresses. She yanked on my hand again, pulling me down to her level.

“Do you want to put on one of the dresses?” I asked again, taking note that most of the girls had already been through multiple wardrobe changes.

Stella leaned in and whispered, “They’re going to laugh at me.”

“No,” I whispered back. “They won’t laugh at you. Here, I’ll sit here with you while you pick one out.”

I smiled at her and helped her pull on a turquoise Ariel dress, meanwhile I felt like I had a golf ball lodged in my throat and equally raucous thoughts to go with it. Oh no, she’s got it! She’s got that thing that I have! The thing that plagues you with nagging self-doubt.

I flashed to being five year’s old in a ballet class with four other girls. They were all students at a local Catholic school and carpooled together to dance class. They were chummy, giggly, and dressed in identical plaid, pleated jumpers. And then there was me; outside of them. They never did or said anything unkind. They never said anything at all. Maybe that’s what I found innately offensive. But I doubt it. I think what was troublesome was my own feeling of awkwardness. But at five, I didn’t have the words, and I didn’t know who to tell.

Standing there with Stella as she pulled on some red ruby slippers, I stopped holding my breath for the angst I supposed she was happening, and suddenly found myself relieved to have been standing there with her, holding her hand while she put on the costume. Relieved that at three, in whatever limited emotional vocabulary she has, she was able to tell me, Wow, this is different. I’m nervous, can you just stand here with me while I put this get-up on?

Later that evening, after bath and bedtime books were read, I tried to have a party debriefing to see if she had any unresolved feelings to analyze.

“Was it different to go to a Princess party?” I asked, trying to lightly use my fingers to detangle her hair without her knowing I was actually brushing her blond rat’s bed.

“Pway wif me,” she said, pushing away both my hand and my counseling attempt. Instead, she handed me a blue T-Rex, while holding her own green triceratops.

I tried to use the dinosaurs as play therapy, reenacting the party scene. My T-Rex, named Rexerella, was feeling shy about putting on a Princess costume.

“Not like dat,” Stella complained. “Hold it like dis.” She showed me how to properly hold the dinosaur by the back, then tried to eat Rexerella.

I decided it was best to let the dinosaurs battle it out without a prehistoric drama agenda.
I finally kissed her goodnight and just as I was about to close her door, I asked her the only question that ever needed to be asked, “Did you have fun at the party?”

“I did,” she smiled, crashing the dinosaurs together. “I was a bootiful, bootiful Princess.”

I Want My MTV

I am resistant to technological change. My cell phone is not Smart. My Netflix DVDs are delivered by a kindly mail person driving a USPS truck. My nephews (11 and 9) explained the difference between a DS and XBox, and I pretended to understand what they were describing. My Facebook page is not a timeline, and I am frightened of Twittering (or is it Tweeting?). But as my family grows in number, and grows out of clothes, and grows hearty in food appetites and extracurricular activities, I grow in my quest for saving a buck.

So I made a big leap. I decided to “bundle” our package. Cable, internet, and our home phone would now be conveniently under one discounted mass media umbrella. And this would somehow magically increase our television channels from 6 to 8 billion and six.

The Cable Guy arrived at our house one post-preschool afternoon. Heath and Stella were cozied up for an hour of decompression that includes snuggling up with their Lovies (matted, cataract-eyed, noseless stuffed Puppy, and well-worn fleecey Beanky, for her), a snack, and some PBS Kids adventures. When the screen went blank, Mr. Cable was met with shrieks of dismay and howls of protest. He did his best to explain the process and tried to mesmerize them with promising tales of deep-sea Sponges that talked and little boys who go on amazing animal adventures.

“All appropriate for their age,” he reassured me, nodding to my four month old, Forest, perched on my hip.

Thing One and Thing Two weren’t buying what he was selling and continued to shoot him surly, furrowed brows between shouting muffled pleas to stop into their Lovies. According to them, this man had come to ruin their lives. I smiled at Cable Dude, silently hoping Stella would not call him a Penis Head, her latest pet name for strangers in Trader Joe’s who dare to come close for some aren’t you just the cutest doting.

And with the flip of a switch (modem, I suppose, for the technically savvy), PBS was replaced by Nick Jr. As if she was sprung to life from the pages of our books, there was our household’s favorite gregarious pig, Olivia. Looks of horror and disbelief melted from their little faces. Angry wailings fell silent. Pupils dilated; mouths dropped agape.

Mr. Technology began his tutorial on the magic that is DVRing, while I feigned listening, distracted by my own noisy thoughts. What have I done?! I’ve ruined my children!

“…and ESPN channels begin here,” he continued. I snapped back to attention long enough to make note of not mentioning the ESPN channels to my husband, Mark, for fear I would surely lose my get-the-kids dinner/bath/bedtime sidekick forever.

Heath woke up the following morning with big plans to not go to preschool so he could stay home and watch the new channels all day. “Sound like a plan?” he asked.

I remained non-committal. Sure enough the “problem” resolved itself after twenty minutes of Little Bear. He was ready to see what his friends at school were doing.

Not much has changed. Turns out I had to call back and get them to add voice mail for an additional charge. Out of 10,000 channels to choose from, Mark complains that I still manage to watch multiple episodes of House that were already available before we brought the media conglomerate into our lives, and Mark discovered the forbidden sport channels, yet we are still partners in parenting.

I did happen upon a few minutes of Jersey Shore and saw Snooki for the first time. I only know her from Bobby Moynihan’s impersonation on SNL, but here she was, live and in the flesh.

As she readied herself for a night on the town, she mused to her friends, I’m wearing two pair o’ underpants, ‘case I piss myself like I did last night. I got the thong on with booty pants over them.

I relayed this important information to my husband, who said he was going to throw up if I didn’t change the channel. We both came away with the same question: what are booty pants?

There’s something to be said for being out of the loop. Of course, now I know what to wear next time I plan to pee on myself.