Bitty Baby's birthday party

Since I already when to the trouble to type this up in another venue, I thought I'd share this here so I can read it again when I'm old and grey. Which means in about three weeks, at the rate I'm going.

So, the Big Girl whines. A LOT. Apparently that's really common at this age. It's maddening in its own right, but what gets me the most is when she whines about her sister. "I don't have anyone to play with me ... It's no fun with Busy around ... There's nothing for me to doooo ... I can't play X because Mommy is ALWAYS making dinner and Daddy is ALWAYS playing with Busy and there is never anybody to play with ME ... Busy always wants to get in my way and mess things up because she doesn't know how to play ... I can't do Y by myself because I'm no good at it and I need a grownup's help but the grownups are always with Busy and it's not fair ..."

Actually she started to blame things on me for marrying Daddy, but I did put a stop to that. Who says I have no authority? And I've started reading "Siblings without Rivalry" to help address the sister problem.

Consequences for whining have developed into Big being set to her room until she can talk with her nice voice. And while she's there she has to read a random page of "14000 things to be happy about" and find one thing that she likes. Tonight she came downstairs giggling like crazy over "bib overalls". But sometimes, to address the underlying need for more of Mommy's attention (which is most of the cause of the whining), I am generous with my time. On Saturday I agreed to play with Big and her dolls for 30 minutes, maybe 45, under the condition that when it was time to stop there would be no whining about it or I wouldn't play anymore. She wanted to play "Bitty Baby's surprise birthday party" and here's how we did it.

1. take all the bedding out from a secret stash in Big's room and make BB's crib
2. find pajamas for BB and Jess and dress both dolls (Big has great difficulty doing these manipulations on her own so I have to do all the dressing)
3. tuck BB and Jess into their beds
4. while the dolls are sleeping, find our purses and pretend to go to the store to buy them toys and pets.
5. "wrap" the toys and hide the pets near the beds
6. "make" a cake (2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 5 cups baking powder; then add the wet ingredients, which are 2 eggs, 1 stick butter, 1 cup milk, and 1 cup oil)
7. while the cake is baking, go to the "store" again to buy party decorations and cake decorations
8. take the cake out of the oven; while it is cooling (for 5 minutes, Mom!) we hang pretend streamers and banners around the room
9. "decorate" the cake and hide it on top of the "refrigerator"
10. wake up the dolls, get them dressed in their day-time clothes
11. (at this point I tell Big that we've been playing for 30 minutes and we have just 15 minutes left)
12. "buckle" everybody into carseats/seatbelts and "drive" to the doctor's office because it looks like BB is getting sick and we need to know if she'll be healthy enough to have her birthday party
13. while at dr's office, Jess "plays" in the well-kids room during BB's checkup; she's OK so then we "drive" home
14. let the dolls "open" their gifts then dress BB in her party clothes, complete with party hat that won't stay on and a party bib for Bitty Bear, and a matching hat for Big.
15. (now I tell Big that we've got 5 minutes left)
16. in the final 5 minutes, we give the dolls their pets, let them walk halfway across the room to the "party" and eat the "cake". I think we remembered to sing Happy Birthday at some point, but I'm not sure.
17. I tell Big that our time is done so we spend another 10-15 minutes putting everything away. To her credit, there is only a token amount of whining ("but that was too fast! We didn't get to play for a WHOLE hour!")

I hope that bought me enough good karma that I am off the hook for American Girls for at least three months. And also? Yay, me, for getting Back to the Blog!