BSC #6: Kristy's Big Day

Front Cover: Kristy's a baby-sitter - and a bridesmaid, too!

Back Cover: Kristy's mom is getting married, and Kristy's a bridesmaid. The only trouble is, fourteen little kids are coming to the wedding, and they all need baby-sitters. Here comes the Baby-sitters Club!

Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, Dawn, and Kristy think they can handle fourteen kids. But that's before they spend five days changing diapers, stopping fights, solving mix-ups, righting wrongs... and getting sick and tired of baby-sitting!

One thing's for sure: This is a crazy way to have a wedding. But it's a great way to have a lot of fun!

So like I thought when I heard about the wedding in the last book, something happens to move up the wedding date. This book starts off with everything going well. Chapter 1 is all about the wedding being in September. There's a big family dinner, and Elizabeth and Watson tell the kids about their plans, offering each kid a role in the wedding. Everything is awesome and everyone is happy and excited.

Come chapter 2, everything goes to shit. Elizabeth is being sent on a business trip the day of the wedding, Watson's ex-wife wants to take the kids on some trip, a family has offered to buy the Thomas' house at full price, but they want it immediately... long story short: the wedding has now been bumped up and is happening in two weeks. Kristy is not amused. She was hoping to spend one last summer next to Mary Anne, and it's all very sudden.

Because everything is happening so fast, there's no time to really book all the usual wedding things. So the wedding is now taking place in Watson's yard, and while they found a caterer who can provide the main course on such short notice, everything else has to be done by the adults themselves. So to help out, all of Kristy's aunts and uncles come to town the week beforehand. Of course, they all have kids. And it being the '80s, they don't just have one kid, they don't just have two kids... each adult pair has 3-4 kids. As the book description tells us, all in all, it's 14 kids.

Originally, the adults figure that the kids can just run around Watson's while the adults worked, but even Elizabeth realizes that that won't really work and that it'll significantly slow down their progress. Kristy then gets one of her brilliant ideas and decides that the BSC can just watch all 14 kids at the Thomas' place. Elizabeth agrees, and says that if the girls would work from 9-5 for 5 days, she and Watson would pay the club 600$: 120$ each.

Kristy brings the idea to the girls, and at first they're not too responsive, but soon they get excited. The group crunches the numbers, and they realize that it works out to only 3 kids per girl, which they have all handled before. Plus, they'd be all together, so they could rely on each other for support. They decide to break the kids into groups, and assign a different sitter for each group, that way if they had to, they could do smaller activities based on age. They make nametags and all in all, get pretty well organized.

The rest of the book is dedicated to the week (probably making this the shortest time frame in the series so far), with each chapter saying what day it is and how many more days until the wedding. Each girl gets a chance to do a notebook entry, but only Dawn and Stacey really have their own separate adventures.

Kristy's chapter covers Monday, Day 1. The only real dilemma in this one was the start of everything. The girls weren't quite anticipating all the different instructions and parents and items coming with the kids, so there was a bit of organization and logistics to go on. And then all the kids were suffering separation anxiety at being dropped off at a new place full of unknown children and things. But the girls soon got everything under control, and halfway through the day, Kristy and Karen left to pick flowers. It was a pretty easy day.

Dawn's chapter covers Tuesday, Day 2. On this day, the girls decided to do separate activities for their groups in the morning, so as to give the kids a change of pace. Stacey took her group (the oldest kids) to the brook to catch minnows, Mary Anne's group (two babies) simply went for a walk, and Claudia and Kristy's groups (the next youngest kids) went to the library with Jamie Newton for story hour. Dawn's group was David Michael, Karen and Berk (a cousin). She took them to the playground. When she got there, she discovered that there were activities going on (I figure similar to the Parkticipate programs we have going on at playgrounds around the city here), so it should have been a fairly easy day. But no, she had Karen. Karen apparently got it into her head that Martians were going to land that night, and no matter what Dawn told her, she would not shut up. Not only does Karen scare David Michael and Berk, but she then goes on to scare the other children in the playground, and all but gets them banded!

Stacey's chapter covers Wednesday, Day 3. She tried taking her group (the 3 oldest kids) to the movies. Things get to a bad start when they're delayed (despite having arrived 40 minutes early), because Emma thinks she's lost her money. When they get seated in the theatre, the kids won't settle and won't shut up and they pretty much get kicked out.

Mary Anne's chapter covers Thursday, Day 4. To take a break from the babies, she and Kristy take all the boys to the barber shop so that they can get ready for the wedding. The boys are completely rude and unruly and unmanageable, and Kristy threatens to call Nannie (everyone's grandma) on them. Finally the boys stop fussing and just sit and get it over with.

Claudia gets Friday, Day 5. It's been raining all day, so the kids are going absolutely stir-crazy. In the end, they decide to put on a mock wedding to keep the kids organized. While this is going on, Emma decides to switch all the kids' clothing around (they're going to the rehearsal dinner right after), so the girls have to scramble and try to reassemble everything. They do in just the nick of time!

Saturday morning is the wedding, and it goes pretty well. Kristy loves her dress and shoes. Karen almost ruins everything when their neighbour, Mrs Porter, shows up, but Watson manages to clamp a hand on her mouth. Kristy's mom and Watson leave for their honeymoon, and Kristy finally manages to figure out what to give them as a wedding gift: a handmade family tree showing their new blended family.

Random Thoughts:

• I love this cover. Kristy looks so happy and pretty on it.
• Fun fact: the updated cover doesn't match the description in the books. In the book, Karen specifically states that her shoes are shiny and black. The updated cover has her in yellow shoes. Also, because I actually read and collected the Little Sister series for a few years when I was younger, I'm unfortunately an expert on Karen Brewer. She doesn't get her glasses until a few books into the Little Sister series (it's a big deal and the plot of an entire book), and the updated cover has her in glasses. She won't get glasses until at least another 20 BSC books.
• I love how Kristy is actually excited about getting a dress and heeled shoes in this book. You can tell that she still wouldn't want to wear dresses on a regular basis, but that since it's such a fancy and special occasion, she's kinda excited. I'm like that.
• Okay, Karen Brewer is super annoying. I never particularly thought so, because again, I started by reading the Little Sister series when I was 7, and continued reading them until I was 9 or 10, before I moved on to the BSC. So I was kind of used to her being the main character. Plus, you know, I was young and dumb haha But re-reading the BSC now, I'm starting to understand why people find Karen so annoying. Especially in this book. I get that she has an overactive imagination, and while imagination is good and you definitely want to foster creativity in children, someone needs to take Karen aside and put her in her place. She causes panic and mayhem with her stupid Martian stories at the playground, despite the fact that Dawn told her to stop. She also nearly causes a scene during her own father's wedding over her stupid next-door neighbour. It's only been 6 books, and I'm already sick and tired of hearing about Morbidda Destiny.
• I like how this book is called Kristy's Big Day, and it involves her mom re-marrying. Then the first book of the Friends Forever series is called Kristy's Big News, and it's about her dad re-marrying.
• I like the girls' reaction in this book when Kristy tells them the news of giving up an entire week towards baby-sitting: silence. It's not until she mentions how much money they'd make that they get excited. This is still early enough into the series that the girls' have lives and interests and aren't like CHILDREN! EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH MORE CHILDREN! HOW CAN WE TURN EVERYTHING INTO A BABY-SITTING EVENT???
• It's funny, because of all of their group events and group baby-sitting endeavors, this was the one that I could most relate to and the one that seemed the most feasible. Plus, I'd rather group baby-sit than solo baby-sit. Not so I could slack off or anything, but there's that freedom/convenience/security of knowing that if shit hit the fan, there'd be other responsible people around to help. Plus if you needed to, you could take a 5 minute breather and go to the bathroom and what not and not have to be like, "I hope the kids are alright..."
• I realized reading this one that I've stopped reading the notebook entries at the start of the chapters. I can't be bothered to try to decipher their handwriting, plus in these early books, their handwriting is kinda different from what I'm used to.