More Powerful Than a Locomotive!

Today is Tuesday, and we are exactly a week away from Viva’s 5th birthday. We are not doing a HUGE party this year, but we are doing a small party at school (cupcakes, goody bags) and we are supposed to be taking her and her best friend C. to Disneyland* the weekend before the birthday – i.e. this coming Saturday. Now, I have called C’s mother twice in the past week and a half and left messages on both her home and cell phones. I offered to just take C. with us, or, if her mom was not comfortable with that, we would of course pay for her as well. NO RESPONSE. This is after I already ran it by her a month or so ago and she agreed to come. So now I am scrambling a bit and will probably see if one or both of my nephews can come instead. I know Viva is going to be really disappointed if C. can’t come – I fully expect big, drippy tears, veins standing out from neck, etc. – so I am pretty ticked off on her behalf.

At any rate, Viva decided that for school, she wants a Bat Cat party. Bat Cat is a fairly minor character in the Charlie and Lola series, so there is no such thing as commercially-licensed Bat Cat paraphernalia. I don’t have as much time on my hands these days as I did when I was home on medical leave and made the Bat Cat Halloween costume, so I asked her to compromise a bit and do a general superhero party. She was down with that, because lately she is crazy for The Incredibles and wants to be Dash (“He can RUN! ON! WATER!”)

and she knows the boys in the class (who outnumber the girls 2 to 1) would be cool with Spiderman and Batman masks and all. But as I am looking for goody bag stuff, etc., I’ve been smacked in the face again with how unbalanced all marketing crap is.

The only female prepubescent superhero that I’m aware of is “Word Girl” who appears on PBS:

She’s great and all, but she has a limited audience. There is no big-name girl superhero.**

This bums me out. Clearly, I am going to have to create one in my spare time.

Speaking of non-commercial superhero stuff for your kid (and we were, weren’t we?), check out Little Capers. Now I’m stomping off to finish a program budget, in a single bound.


*I know, this seems to completely contradict my hatred of all things Disney. But we live less than an hour away from D-Land and Viva has never been and wants to go. Sometimes for your kids you have to suck it up.

** Yes, I know Dash’s sister is a superhero, but she’s in junior high. She can turn invisible and create force fields, which is pretty handy, but she doesn’t have the punchy personality of Dash, so I can see why Viva is not so taken with her.