HELLO
Mom to Iris. Wife to Todd. Our little family lives at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We love it here and I love sharing little bits of our life.
Move over CVS – Iris has a new obsession and, turns out, she is far from alone. Iris’ new favorite thing is watching toy unwrapping videos on YouTube. She calls them “egg shows” because the first videos she watched were of Kinder Surprise Eggs being unwrapped, showing off the prizes inside. She found them on the YouTube Kids app all on her own and now that’s all she wants to watch. Whether they are plastic eggs with surprises inside or little packages with mystery toys, she wants to watch it all. Todd and I were totally weirded out by this obsession at first, but when we realized many of the videos had over a million views, we realized this must be an actual thing. Turns out, it is. I’ve posted clips of Iris watching “egg shows” on my Snapchat and have had quite a few people message me to say their kids are obsessed with them too. So then how come this is the first time I’m hearing of it? Are our toddlers all closeted unwrapping addicts?
For some reason it feels wrong to let her watch it. I mean, with Daniel Tiger at least she’s learning something, right? But then Todd pointed out something. Our parents collected baseball cards, for us it was Garbage Pail Kids, for the next generation it was Pogs, and so on. Can you imagine if when you were a kid there was a platform where you could watch someone open every item of whatever it was that you nerdily collected? For now, we let her watch the unwrapping videos (as annoying as they are), but limit her screen time. And the sucker in me has already started shopping for Christmas stocking stuffers – searching for egg surprises and blind bags in the toy aisle. Maybe I can really make her dreams come true and find some at CVS.
Do your kids watch these videos? Not know what I’m talking about? I’ve posted some of her favorites below.
I had just picked up Iris from school when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I almost let it go to voicemail, but then I noticed the caller ID said Burbank, CA. On the last ring I answer it and I hear, “Hi! Is this Sarah? This is (name withheld) from the Ellen Degeneres show.”
THE ELLEN SHOW?!
I still have no idea how they got my number, but I guess when you are Ellen you can find out just about whatever you want. He said he heard about Iris’ CVS birthday party and, since Ellen is always looking for positive, upbeat stories to feature on her show, he wanted to ask me a few questions.
ANYTHING YOU WANT, ELLEN!
He asked all about myself, my family, and the story behind Iris’ birthday party. He requested to talk to Iris, but she was stuffing her face full of M&Ms (from CVS, of course) and wasn’t quite in the mood to chat it up with a stranger. He wanted to set up a time to Skype with her later that evening to see what could come out of it, with the caveat that he “always likes to manage expectations” (AKA – don’t get my hopes up). So we hung up with a plan to Skype an hour later. And that’s when I realized…
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO SKYPE!
I quickly downloaded the program, signed up for an account, and crossed my fingers I could figure it out when the call came. Then, my main focus turned towards getting Iris to cooperate. She was in a pitiful mood. Tired, hungry, whiney – JUST what Ellen is looking for, I’m sure.
At 6:30 pm (basically Iris’ witching hour) we Skyped with the producer. It went… not so great. Within seconds our talkative, hilarious, adorable little kid transformed into a scrunched up mute with her hands curled up over her eyes. When she actually said something, she whispered so quietly that I could barely hear her myself. While my heart was sinking, knowing this wasn’t going to work out, I just hugged her as she sat in my lap and we awkwardly finished the call.
She’s four. She has no idea what this is or what it means. And that’s okay. What matters most out of all of this is that Iris has a positive experience to look back on and I feel satisfied knowing that she does. The producer asked that we not take up any other offers for TV shows that may come our way, as they always like to be first, and that he would connect back with me the next day.
He never called.
I knew what the answer would be, but with as much as I love Ellen, I was still a little bummed that they left us hanging. Iris on the other hand, she’s just happy she can continue eating her M&Ms in peace.
Last week was one of the craziest of my life. I now know what it feels like to legitimately “go viral.” While I knew that Iris’ birthday party idea was a unique one, what I didn’t know was how much the world would care. On Friday night I blogged about her party, which was the day before, and by Saturday The Daily Dot had picked up the story. I hadn’t ever heard of The Daily Dot, but they had a good amount of followers on Facebook, so I thought that was pretty cool. Then with one email everything changed – it was from Buzzfeed. Wow. Buzzfeed? Now that I’ve heard of. The reporter said that she was interested in the story and left a few questions for me to answer. We were driving back from a wedding on Saturday night when I crafted my response and hit send.
On Sunday I received another email, this time from Tech Insider. I thought that was an interesting demographic, but whatever – I responded. I never heard back from Buzzfeed, so I thought that perhaps they changed their minds. It was just a story about a toddler birthday party after all… Wrong. On Monday things started to get a little crazy. I saw that a few places online picked it up and by mid-morning a friend alerted me to the Buzzfeed story. From there, the whole thing just took off. My Gmail inbox was flooded with requests from media outlets all over the world. I was honestly surprised at how many news organizations asked permission to post a story that was already publicly out there, but it was much appreciated. From our local news all the way to the UK, I responded as best as I could. This continued for a few days, but it all finally started to settle down as Friday rolled around. I tried to explain to Iris what was happening and I still don’t think she gets it. Since Iris has been plastered all over my Instagram since she was born, she’s used to people knowing who she is around town. I’ve been asked a lot of questions over the last week and a half, so I thought I’d sum it all up here.
What was the craziest thing that happened out of all of this?
The Buzzfeed story has been viewed over a million times. We were the sixth most popular story last week! To me that’s pretty dang crazy. We’ve also Skyped with a couple of major network television talk show producers. While I’m not hopeful anything will happen, it was definitely an interesting experience. In my next post I’ll talk about one of them… Cliff hanger alert!
Was this really Iris’ idea?
As mentioned in my pervious post, this was totally Iris’ idea. I only reached out to CVS after she chose her theme because, well, I didn’t know how I was going to pull it off. I sent a random email through the CVS website to tell them about the weird party my daughter wanted and to see if they wanted to help. I was genuinely surprised when I got a response back.
What did CVS think about it all?
I’ve been in contact with the company that handles their PR, but a person directly from CVS hasn’t reached out. I hope that they are happy with all of the unique press and not put off by any of the negative comments that we received.
Speaking of negativity, I guess now is the time to mention the pill bottles.
Apparently people feel very strongly about providing candy in pill bottles, but let me take this time once again to stress that we only gave them to the adults. This party was for our friends and their kids. In fact, there were probably more adults than kids there. And heck yes I provided alcohol to them and it was very much appreciated. If you drink and have ever been to a kid birthday party, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve read some pretty nasty things online about what kind of horrible mother I must be to have those things at my daughter’s party, but for every negative comment there were 100 positive ones. At the end of the day, Iris had a blast and her comments are the only ones I care about. Well, hers and Britney Freakin’ Spears:
So what’s next?
As crazy as things got last week, nothing actually changed. I did gain a ton more Instagram followers and made a few new connections, but that’s about it. We’ll still go to CVS weekly and as for her birthday party next year, we’ll just have to see wait and see what she requests.
Where all was it published?
I had a hard time keeping up with all the stories, so I tried to compile a list of the major ones, including a few video pieces (which were Iris’ favorites).
A few video stories:
The Today Show: When Carson, Matt, and Savannah sit around and talk about a party you threw, it’s a big deal.
Inside Edition:
Making the local news all around the country – This one is in Philly!
To be honest the past few days have been a whirlwind. A fabulous, fun-filled whirlwind. I’ll have an update soon on what it’s been like to genuinely “go viral,” but for now here’s something a little different. When Popsugar Momsreached out about wanting to write about Iris herself (not just the CVS story) I of course was on board. Now it’s my favorite story of the day… and there’s been a lot.
About a month ago I asked Iris what kind of theme she wanted for her fourth birthday party… Frozen, Hello Kitty, Star Wars, etc. Her answer? CVS. Yes, as in the second largest pharmacy chain, just behind Walgreens. If you follow me on Instagram you are probably well aware of her love for the store. What you might not know is why the heck our kid loves it so much. Let’s take a look back, shall we?
Here’s a video of Iris literally in tears, crying for her favorite store.
A video posted by Sarah Fortune (@sarahfortune) on
It all started nearly two years ago when construction began on our city’s very first CVS Pharmacy. The site happens to be directly on our path to Iris’ school, so we drive past the location at least twice a day. Being that she was only three when it opened, she watched the progress of the structure being built for nearly half of her life, so naturally it was a big deal when the store finally opened. When Iris first got to step inside the brand new CVS, she was not disappointed. She discovered all the snacks, drinks, toys, chap-stick, and band-aids that her little heart could ever desire.
The store has been open for nearly a year now and stopping in to pick up a sweet treat or a strawberry milk is at least a weekly occurrence for us. There are tears when we drive by and don’t stop, and there are cheers when we do. This girl’s love for CVS is pure and true – so loyal that I recently asked Iris where she’d rather go – CVS or Disneyworld. Her response? “CVS and Disneyworld.” Don’t you dare make a girl choose.
So when your kid puts CVS on the same level as Disneyworld, you embrace it. When they ask for a CVS birthday party, you throw it. One day it won’t be so simple to make her happy, so for now I take her to CVS when we have a few extra minutes to spare and try my best to make her birthday party special, as tricky as it may be (after all, there are no Pinterest boards for this, folks).
But when CVS headquarters heard about Iris’ party, they sent us tons of snacks, favors, and party supplies to celebrate. How cool is that? And when we told the local store manager about what kind of party we were having, he was so sweet to donate some CVS-brand water bottles to add to the goodie bags. Not to mention that her year was MADE when they flashed a big “Happy Birthday” message to Iris up on the big sign out front.
To celebrate CVS style, we gathered at our favorite local park with some of our favorite people. Here are a few photos from our day.
Party prep!
Birthday Girl
Best thing ever.
Party time!
Gotta keep the adults entertained.
Don’t worry. These were Tic Tac favors for the grown-ups only!
Gold Emblem™ snacks (a CVS exclusive) sent directly from their headquarters!
Goodie bags!
A big thank you to all of our friends who celebrated and happily played along (apparently so many people bought her a birthday gift from our local CVS that all the employees knew about the party). And thank you to CVS who helped make Iris’ fourth birthday so special. By the way, this is in no way sponsored by CVS. Just 100% true love.
