MyThreeDaughters

It started so innocently.
That’s what I thought.
On Saturday morning, Fontaine announced a birthday party for “Bow.” Bow Bunny, because the little stuffed rabbit sports a bow. (For a while, I thought it was “Beau” or even “Bo,” and I feared we had lived in Virginia too long.)
She drew a beautiful invitation and gave it to Elizabeth: “Please come to Bow’s birthday party. Wear pritty dresses.”
Aw, how sweet, I thought.
One step ahead.
They have a little tea party or something, which Rosebud, as Fontaine once put it, “destroyolates.”
Two steps.
Fontaine calls us all in to the living room, you know, to sing Happy Birthday to Bow. I kind of mouth it, it being 8:30 on a Saturday morning and not wanting my scratchy deep voice to ruin the innocense of the moment.
Three steps ahead. I still don’t see what’s going to go down.
Then there’s some sort of gift for the teddy bear. I can’t remember what it was. A tiny teddy human? Somehow, it gets opened.
Four ahead.
Then…”O.K.,” Fontaine calls out, “Thanks for coming everybody, but first, the gift bags!”
There are GIFT bags!? The modern-era thing where kids get gifts for going to someone else’s party. Fan-tastic.
Five steps.
She goes and finds some empty decorative plastic bags from Halloween, hops up onto the kitchen counter…
You see what’s happening here?
…and starts tossing stuff from our out-of-reach candy bowl into the bags.
Six steps.
Check.
She zips back into the living room, and it’s 8:45 in the morning, and hands thems out.
“I think I’ll start with this one,” she says, and starts throwing down the chocolate.
Chocolate, on a Saturday morning, a long day lay ahead.
But what were we supposed to do? It was Bow’s birthday.
Checkmate.