Birthday Wrap-Up

One more post to wrap up the birthday weekend. Yesterday morning was Landon's party at a brightly colored warehouse full of bounce houses, aka Toddler Heaven.

a small corner of the inflatable universe

We picked this particular place because it's near our house (and near all of his friends' houses), relatively new, very clean, and geared toward the younger crowd. It was also very well priced. I think I spent more money hosting his party at our house last year- though this did deny me a chance to use my serving dishes and lay out a table full of food and I do love doing that.

Anyway, the kids LOVED it and JP, who got to do his favorite thing and become a kid himself, loved it too.

I don't like to post pictures of other people's kids without their knowledge and permission, and since most people I know don't know I have a blog, there aren't many pictures I can share from the party. For the record, there were 9 toddlers in attendance and all appeared to have a blast. It was adorable to watch them play with each other and to see that happy hysterical squealing is very contagious. I also realized later that all of them were extremely well behaved- everyone got along, happily ate their pizza and fruit, and then patiently waited for their piece of cake.

And speaking of the cake:

Landon found the caterpillar to be every bit as delicious as he anticipated.

It was a lot of fun and it was awesome to just leave at the end of it all. We opened the presents at home after his nap and he got some great things that were mostly different from anything he already had. I'd flirted with the idea of putting "no gifts please" on the invitation because he just doesn't need anything and he continues to be so happy with the toys he already has- I don't think he's ever even asked for anything. But we never buy him toys outside of holidays and his birthday and we've bought gifts for nearly all of his invited friends, so I decided to leave it off. And I have to admit that I'm glad I did- he loves his new toys and has spent the whole day rotating among them (current favorite: a Melissa & Doug grilling set and a John Deere tractor/dump truck thingy). We already wrote our thank-you notes and talked about how nice it was that all of his friends picked out such special presents for him-- and if asked he'll tell you his favorite part about his birthday was the cake (and, if pressed to move beyond sugar, he'll say it was bouncing at the bounce house with his friends), so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about materialism taking hold of him. Not yet at least.

All in all it was a lovely, surprisingly relaxing birthday celebration. Now I'll get back to some regularly scheduled publishing on things like my thoughts on being halfway through my maternity leave, c-section v. vaginal birth recovery, Claire's newbornhood, and whatever else I happen think of or you ask me to write about.

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