30 Month Birthday

Sydney's half birthday was yesterday, May 2nd. I think that the whole half birthday business is really funny. Normally, I'm the one looking for things to celebrate and trying to get Jeremy all excited about, Chinese New Year, for example. I can't help it... I teach Kindergarten and every single holiday gets a nod at calendar time, at least. So I know all of these random holidays that other people don't really celebrate. The only person I know who does holidays better than I do is my friend Kara. You should check out her posts on Earth Day (you did know there was an Earth Day) and Pi Day (I bet less of you knew about that one) and Square Root Day (no one but Kara knew about that one, I'm sure).

In any case, holidays are my thing. Except, apparently, for half birthdays. Jeremy is all about the half birthday. After Sydney had her first birthday, I lost track of the number of months old she was and just started looking forward to the next birthday. Not Jeremy. He made a big fuss about her 18 month birthday and now this year he wanted to celebrate her 30 month birthday. It took me like three minutes just to figure out that 30 months and two and half years are the same age. Then again, I am very, very pregnant.

Our developing family tradition is that on your actual birthday, you get the presents and cake and all that. On your half birthday, you just get a day of doing exactly what you would want to do. We celebrated Sydney's half birthday on Sunday since I had made other plans for Saturday before realizing that it was her half birthday (see, I'm just not the one driving this tradition, as much as I love it). We still went to church, but we ditched Sunday School, mostly because Jeremy had agreed to help with a church dinner that afternoon from 3 to 8 and we therefore only had the early afternoon to go out and do fun stuff. (Yes, I did just say that Jeremy volunteered to help at the church for 5 hours. I cannot express how persuasive this one volunteer coordinator at the church is.)

After church, we went home and changed clothes (and got the camera, of course). Then we went through the car wash. I count this is as part of Sydney's day, actually. She loves the car wash. Jeremy and I do, too. I think it's because we are such water people. We all love fountains and listening to the sound of water and the car wash is just one more way to be in the middle of all of the sounds and sights of water.

Then we went to a fountain to throw money in it. This is one of Sydney's current favorite activities. I have no idea how much money she would throw into a fountain. Even today, her special day, we stopped her after about twenty pennies. After the fountain, she and Jeremy walked around this stream and small waterfall. I'll take a minute here to express how much I love living in Georgetown. I included the one picture of Jeremy and Sydney by the stream and then a much further away shot of them more upstream (where Sydney is looking for small rocks, since I won't let her throw money in water that isn't a fountain). You can see the Kohl's in that picture. The water fountain and the stream are both behind the big shopping center here in town. Who would have expected that?

The shopping center also has a PetSmart, which is where we went next (after a costume change, necessitated by the looking for small rocks and throwing them in the stream). We took Sydney there thinking she would like to look at the birds, but she was actually more interested in the rats. I can't say I think the rats were that neat, but it wasn't my day, was it?

By now, it was 11 o'clock and time for lunch. We took Sydney to Red Robin. This is normally one of my favorite places, so Jeremy was a little skeptical about how this fit in with it being Sydney's day and all. When she ate all of her grilled cheese sandwich and mandarin oranges faster than he could eat his burger and fries, I think it started to click with him. She also got her very own chocolate shake that she didn't have to share with anyone.

Red Robin also has some video games in the entry, and Sydney loves this one race car game. She can't reach the pedal to push the gas, so Jeremy or I have to play it with her, but she does all of the steering and is very happy to crash into all of the trees and other cars.

Our final stop was at Kiddie Acres. Sydney loves riding the rides there, and on the one hand, it seems like we go there a lot and it's losing some of it's "specialness," but on the other hand, if she loves it, shouldn't we go more often, not less? This time she was particularly gleeful on the airplanes and was very happy to ride the horse. She also rode the ferris wheel, which she has to do all by herself, which I think is pretty brave for a little girl.

Sydney fell asleep on the way home, but didn't really stay asleep once we got home. She did, however, play in her room for quite a while so that I could rest up from all of our adventures while her daddy went up to the church. I really appreciated that.

Happy 30th Month birthday!