The Baby-Sitters Club #24: Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise

Kristy wants to get her mom something special for Mother's Day, and when she brings it up at the BSC meeting, everyone else agrees. She decides that the best thing to do is treat all the mothers of their charges too. They'll send out invitations and take the kids out on the day before the holiday, but they can't decide where to go.

While sitting for Jamie and Lucy, Claudia sees a flyer for a circus. Jamie really wants to go but his parents can't take him, which is what puts the idea in her head. When she tells the other girls, they make a list of everyone who might want to go. Since it ends up being so long, they call Stacey and ask her to come back for the weekend and help.

They create a card, send it out, and get back 21 replies, which conveniently lets each girl watch over three kids. Karen and Andrew keep fighting with David Michael over which parents love them the best, so they can't be in the same group. They spend pages trying to decide how to divide up the groups to keep everyone happy and make everything fair. They decide to go to the circus, take the kids to a park for lunch and to play, and then back to the Kishi house for crafts.

Stacey shows up, meets Jessi for the first time, and seems a little sad and happy to be back. Foreshadowing: her parents are fighting a lot, but she tries to just laugh it off. She even has a cute moment with Charlotte, where they don't tell her that Stacey came back. She sneaks up on her, Charlotte gets all excited, and they end up hugging for a really long time.

Everyone loves the circus. Margo throws up on the merry go round, Jenny and Claire get into a fight, and Karen develops a crush on Shea. She convinces most of them to go into the haunted house, gets scared, and a worker has to take them out an emergency exit, which seems really out of character for Karen. The worker then tells her how they did some of the tricks, and Karen has a hard time not telling anyone else. They get everyone calmed down, take them back to the Kishi house, and they all make cards for their moms.

Elizabeth keeps talking about wanting to have another baby and how the other kids would feel. Karen and David Michael aren't thrilled with the idea, and Andrew doesn't want someone else to be the baby. Kristy thinks it's a great idea and keeps asking her mom if she's pregnant. At the end of the book, she and Watson admit that they adopted a baby and since this is Stoneybrook, she's coming the next day.

They all work together to get a bedroom ready for her arrival later that night. While they go to the airport to pick her up, Kristy invites over the whole club. They bake cookies and make a banner, but when they come back, Emily Michelle is asleep. Kristy reassures Andrew that everyone will always love him and reflects on how her family now feels whole.

*Every time I read one of these early books, I get so annoyed at the comments about Kristy and Bart. In this one, she refers to him as gorgeous and there's a gushing paragraph about how much she likes him.

*Kristy really needs to stop talking about how her mom is too old to have kids, especially since I'm only a few years younger than Elizabeth and not yet a mom.

*I giggled when she made a reference to the old "I couldda had a V-8" commercial.

*For the Mother's Day outing Kristy wears a Leave it to Beaver tee shirt, jeans, running shoes, her collie hat, and an SHS sweatshirt she stole from Sam. Stacey wears lacy white socks, a white tee shirt, a pink jumpsuit, and jellies. Claudia wears a pale blue baggy shirt, black and blue leopard printed pants that tied above the ankles (?), purple hightops, and a snake bracelet. BTW, my spellcheck informs me that "hightops" is not a word. I guess that went out of style in the 80s.

*Other outfits!

-Mallory: jeans with zippers on the bottom (totally rocked those!), an SMS shirt, and gold hoop earrings.

-Jessi: jeans, purple leotard, matching earrings.

-Mary Anne: black and white checkered bow, matching skirt, gold name necklace.

-Dawn: tame dress, plaid hightops, "I'm Awesome" necklace.

-Claudia: tame dress (ha!), red necktie, spider and web earrings, push down socks in red, blue, and purple.

*I love that Mrs. Newton can't take Jamie to the circus, but she still leaves the flyer hanging up on the fridge as a constant reminder of what he can't have LOL.

*I think it's really cute that Mr. Pike agrees to watch Marnie Barrett for the day so Mrs. Barrett can have a day off. Then again, it doesn't really seem like Mrs. Barrett ever does anything, so I'm not sure why she needs an entire day away from her kids.

*Claudia, Dawn, and Stacey make broaches for their moms that sound butt ugly. They buy miniatures, mix them with fake jewels, and glue them onto pins from the craft store.

*Everyone keeps giving Mary Anne the sideways look and changing the subject when Mother's Day comes up. She finally decides to buy her dad a gift because he's kind of like her mom and her dad. Everyone wonders why she never thought of doing it before. Except, didn't she? I thought in her Portrait book that she got him something.

*It's nice to know that an adoption agency lets Watson and Elizabeth adopt a child they've (a) never seen before, (b) never visited in the agency, and (c) are clearly not ready for.

*The whole ending to this book really ticked me off. They somehow get to adopt a baby without going through any type of screening. No one even comes to the house to see if they have a room for her or what the family is like! Then when people point out that they need supplies, Elizabeth is all like "oh well we can just go shopping on Monday after she gets here." WTF people???