Finally starting to recover...

From my insane weekend.

As mentioned in the previous entry, my darling daughter celebrated the Big 2 on Saturday. By some miracle I was able to keep from weeping and managed to enjoy myself despite my sadness that my wee girl is growing up.

I had a moment of insanity where I declared "You know what would be fun?? Let's have all of Grace's little friends over for a party!" So I cheerfully made up a little guest list and started planning. The reality of this guest list hit me the night before: 5 toddlers, 2 pre-schoolers and 2 school-aged children, and their parents...in my apartment. Which is a pretty good size...until you pack about 17 people of varying size into the livingroom.

All jokes aside about my questionable mental health, it was really great. The kids had fun, Grace had a blast. We were actually organized enough to play a game of "stick the butterfly to Eeyore's head" which went really well and everyone won a prize. I am so proud of everyone for taking their turns without tears and thankful to the bigger kids for their help.

Then Grace opened her presents...this pic can give you an idea of the mob that surrounded her:



She's in the middle somewhere...and so am I.

Then we served Cake #1:



Everyone ate and was merry. The kiddies all went home with a fun-filled treat bag, and we got an hour's respite before my parents, my brothers, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, her fiance, my niece and her pal showed up.

Auntie Lisa brought Grace a Pooh balloon, which was a huge hit;



At around 5:30ish pizza arrived and as we all dove in and munched...the birthday girl dozed off in her highchair:



It took a while to wake her up (there are a number of reasons for wanting her to wake up, to name a few; she had some presents to open, and I did not want her up until 1am). She did start opening presents, but it took her a while to get into it:



She perked up while opening the presents, but she had no tolerance for the cards. She really perked up when she opened this one:



And they didn't believe us when we said she was really into Superman. She saw what was in this package and cried "Oh! THE MAN! Op it Mommy...op the man!!!"

Overall the presents she recieved from both parties were great, everything she got was obviously chosen especially for her and she has been in heaven playing lately.

Then came Cake #2:



She did not eat much of this one, she was too eager to play.

Later, once the last guest left, Grace and her Daddy set up a tea party with the set from Alison:



As you can see, the Roaring Dinosaur (from Cameron), Superman and Diego (of the show Go Diego Go! He's Dora's cousin) are in attendance.

Phil had blocked off this weekend in honour of Grace's big day...and also because in the weeks previous he worked/in class/in clinical for about 30 days straight. So we headed over the the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History to the see the Reptile exhibit. We are planning to attend again over the upcoming March Break, but we figured it would be nice to see it without the really big crowd.

Ran into Lynne when we arrived, she recommended I check out the chameleon's tongue. It did not disappoint, I had myself a really good laugh at that...because apparently I'm 12.

Grace, of course, fell asleep about a block before we arrived, so she was napping when we started through. Cam on the other hand really enjoyed the animals in the front lobby area:



He also enjoyed the big robotic reptiles:



I found this one to be a bit disturbing:



Note the claws of the beastie being eaten are driven into the throat of one of its attackers. That's good family fun. (I can't remember what those hairy monsters are called, but don't they look like the Rodents Of Unusual Size?)

Grace did wake up as we travelled up to the other galleries and really enjoyed the live lizards.



This is her with the Blue-tounged Skink...when I told her the name she looked at me and said "him stink?"

She also really liked the Bearded Dragon:



With this one she declared "Aw, he so cute!"

Although the only one of the large robots she liked was the big rattle snake, she stuck her tongue out at it...but when it hissed and rattled she hit the floor.

And no trip to the NSMNH would be complete without a Gus-sighting



We forayed into the gift shop, and since Cam had been such a well-behaved boy we allowed him to pick out a toy, he chose a stuffed toy snake with 2 heads. It's bizarre, but he loves it.

On our way to dinner at McDonald's we ran into The Knitting Sailor and I had a brief moment of embarassment when I called her Jenn. That's not her name. I apologized to Julie...my only excuse is pregnancy brain.

After what seemed like forever we finally arrived home. The kids took a break to read some books before bed:



Shortly after Cam went off to bed and was asleep moments after his head touched the pillow. Grace on the other hand, was over-tired at this point and screamed for an hour and a half before finally crashing.

Yesterday we simply hung out around the house. We needed it!