We celebrated Taliana’s birthday twice this week! First, we had a little mini-celebration with her grandparents (and, of course, Heather and Assaf) on Thursday. This was a rescheduled event–her actual bday was Monday, but both kids were so tired, H. decided it would both be too rushed and too challenging to have it on a school night.
So, on Thursday, we had a yummy dinner (where Dylan declared and devoured all bell peppers shaped like candy canes) and watched Taliana open a few gifts.
The real bday celebration, with Taliana’s buddies — was today and it was another bowling bash! Cameron fell asleep before Tom arrived (he’d gone for a run and was meeting us there), so I basically had to try bowling with her snoozing in the Ergo!
I wasn’t the only one bowling with kid in hand…I just happened to be the worst (Dan actually bowled a strike or two!). And, Tom did bowl a few frames with Dylan–most of his throws went straight to the gutter!
After bowling, Taliana blew out candles on yet another birthday cake (an ice cream cake) and Dylan just totally devoured his Rice Dream ice cream cookie!
Dylan’s gymnastics gym also had a grand opening today with free face painting, free gym time, and a free little gummy fruit snack! After the party was over, we headed over there with Taliana and Heather. It turns out the face painter is a co-worker of mine!! She painted a nice sun (Dylan’s choice) for Dylan and some flowers for Taliana.
We also saw the photographer who took pictures for the grand opening ad that was placed in the local newspaper (she kindly emailed me some photos of Dylan!) and a mommy friend we’ve known since Dylan was wee and still going to Mothersong regularly.
But, as if that weren’t enough activity already, we also had tickets to see UCSC’s holiday show, “Mixed Nutz“. This show was absolutely amazing — a capella renditions of Tchaikovsky’s music, Cirque du Soleil-like acrobatics, high-school kids riding unicycles and little kids doing floor gymnastics — but what was even more amazing was Cameron soaking it all in and just loving it!
She barely made a peep aside from a couple of excited little chirps. She loved looking at the stage lights overhead and she actually watched the performances — it helped that their costumes were colorful, I’m sure. At points, she played with my hands and crammed my fingers into her mouth. With about 15 minutes left in the show, she sacked out right on my lap. Amazing.
Dylan and Taliana both clearly enjoyed the show also. Neither of them napped, but they made it all the way to the finish. At times during the show, Dylan would turn to me and say, “that’s so funny!” and during one of the acts, he asked, “how do they do that??” After the final bows, Dylan and I went down to buy some CDs from SoVoSo, the a capella group that performed the music. They were still on stage, so a few members signed the CDs we bought. All in all, a very fun and eventful day!!
