Because Jack's birthday this year was on a Monday, his birthday celebration is turning into a week-long celebration and festival.
Yesterday we took him to the Philadelphia Zoo for a special adventure day. It was his first trip to the zoo here, and the first trip to any zoo that he is likely to remember.
Really, he was terribly impressed with just the fountain and ducks in front and was very reluctant to move along even though we told him there was even cooler stuff to see. He must have been suspicious, thinking it was all a trick to get him to go back to his car seat.
But after the first few exhibits he started to realize that this place has a lot of cool things in it and they keep going and going. You run out of energy before you run out of cool things to see. So when we said, let's go see the next thing he stopped protesting. Instead he grabbed our hands and started walking.
Jack especially liked the monkeys and the fountains. We also saw giant tortoises, elephants, a rhino, the reptile house and the big cats.
We bought an overpriced lunch from some nice ladies at one of the zoo's concession stands and sat at a table in the shade to eat it. Jack had chicken nuggets and fries. Stupid mommy made the mistake of giving one of the geese clustered around the lunch tables a tiny piece of bread. Jack thought this was cool and threw a piece to the goose. The goose got the idea then that we were a source of food and he/she stole the chicken nugget from Jack's hand.
Jack was incensed at the sheer injustice of it for a while, long after it was clear that he would not be getting the nugget back from the goose. Five, ten, fifteen minutes later he was still shaking his finger at the goose and yelling "chicken!"
We tried to make it to the children's zoo, but it was clear Jack was running out of energy by then. At that point he wanted to be carried, and wanted to be carried only by mommy. As a big sucker and mommy of the birthday boy I gritted through the pain and carried the boy the half mile back to the car in the 85 degree heat and high humidity at 8 months pregnant. Really, I didn't think I was going to make it. And as Jack napped in the afternoon at home I had ice bags on all the joints in my legs and took as much Tylenol as a pregnant lady is allowed to take.
Today Jack took cupcakes into his school and goodie bags for all his friends. They sang "Happy Birthday to You" or as Jack knows it: "Happy to You!"
After school he had his favorite dinner, another cake with another round of Happy to You! and got his big present from mommy and daddy and then spent a long time loading up pine cones and then dumping them out over and over.
There are many other presents to come still sitting here from grandpa who lives in Massachussetts and Grandma who lives in California and another one from mommy and daddy. And then on Saturday there's a family party to top off the week of celebration.
Happy Birthday Jack!
Posted by: Leggy | June 19, 2007 at 10:49 AM
I'm seriously laughing at you! I can't believe that you bought that!
Very very cute. Happy Birthday Week Jack.
Posted by: Aurelia | June 19, 2007 at 10:32 PM