Of Princesses and Parties

Zelazny blogging will return shortly, but I did promise my friend Eric a post about his party, so here it is. While we were there, Eric asked me if I was going to blog about it. Duh. I blog about everything. Ever since I moved to a pseudonymous open blog, I talk about certain things in less detail, but yeah, I still blog about everything.

On Monday night, I took Lily to a party while Jen made falafels for her luncheon. The party was for Eric's son and Batman-themed. They had Batman water, Batman plates, Batman napkins and they even had a Batcave, though I docked them significant points for the absence of a giant penny.

Lily was wearing her Princess costume and asked me to put a set of fairy wings on her. She stressed to people that she wasn't actually a fairy princess; she was just dressed as one. Though apparently she was still magical since she turned me into a jellybean at one point.

Lily was afraid of the Joker on the napkins. (Though I don't know why. The Joker is a tool.)

Lily: Daddy, this witch is scary.
Me: Okay, I'll get you a new napkin. (Turns around, flips napkin upside down so that she'd just see the bats against a skyline)
Lily: (Peers critically at me) You didn't get me a new napkin. You just flipped that one over.

Now there's no way she could have seen that, so I assume she deduced it. That kid is too sharp.

But it was a pretty great party. Gift bags had candy and comic books (ours was an issue of Tiny Titans) Lily wanted to play with me and Eric more than she did with the other kids, which is not a trait I'm sure I want to encourage or not, but we did have fun. Eric pushed her on the swing and then I would bend over to pick something up and then she'd stick out her legs and kick me in the heinie. She would laugh and laugh, and she does have such a wonderful laugh when she's happy.

When she was telling Jen about that later that night, she was laughing so much that she could barely get the story out. After she finished, she said to me, "That story cracked me up. That means it made me laugh really hard!"

Tuesday was pretty quiet and then for the next day we watched Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue and again, our Wacky Wednesday movie was pretty good, particularly with the animation and the water effects. I'm kind of pleased they didn't half-ass it, and they certainly could have gotten away with it, because if Lily is any indication of the target audience, they'll watch anything with fairies in it, no matter how lousy it is.

It was about a little girl who catches Tinkerbell and becomes her friend. I asked Lily what she would do if she caught a fairy, but the fairy wanted to go home. She said, "I'd be sad, but I would give her my princess shoe so she'd have a home and then she would remember me."

Lily didn't want to join us on the couch because she was wearing her wings again, but we had a good time regardless. Also, I happen to like Mae Whitman and Kristin Chenoweth (and I do spend an inordinate amount of time blogging about women with funny voices but that's neither here nor there.)

The movie is about a little nine-year old girl whose scientist father is so focused on his work that he doesn't have time for her. When she meets Tinkerbell, she befriends her and Tink helps her put together a scientific journal about faeries. There's some kid-level of tension, but nothing serious and daddy and daughter are nicely reconciled at the end. I'm a sucker for movies that have good dads.

When we were done, Lily threw her arms around my neck and said "Oh, I love happy endings!"

She was kind of naughty during bed time, and when I picked her up off the bed in the room adjacent to hers our we're using as a guest bed, she got really upset. She said that she just wanted to tire herself out, but I thought that it would only serve to get her more wound up, so I grabbed her and shut the door. Things went downhill from there, and she got more upset than I've ever seen her.

She threw herself on the bed and covered up with her blanket and hugged her lamb and kept crying and saying things like "I'm going right to bed. No stories, no kiss goodnight, no holding hands. I was bad all day. I broke my own heart!"

She felt so guilty. I felt terrible. After a good forty minutes, I calmed her down, and convinced her that she was only a little bad at the end of the day. She was happy then, so I asked her how she had felt earlier. I was expecting something like sad, or perhaps "really sad". Instead she said "I felt like I was alone in the playground without mommy and daddy, and it was dark and cold and scary and and there were birds flying overhead and there are spiders and spiderwebs, and I'm all by myself."

I thought she was going to start quoting Return of the King. "No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades."

She's going to be a poet or a drama queen, or maybe both.

I asked her how she felt now that she was happier. She smiled her wonderful smile and said "Now it's sunny and mommy and daddy are with me, we're in a field where we can pick any flowers we want and Lamby is here and she is so happy that she turned into a real lamb!"

That's more like it. We may not win all our fights, but we win the ones that matter.