Nicholas' Birthday--Part 2

Nicholas' birthday was exhausting, but I think overall he had a good time. It was very un-birthday-like, since we didn't have a cake or anything, but it was full of outings and special treats. The only real birthday thing we did was that when he woke up this morning Joe and I went to get him together and sang to him before taking him out. He thought that was pretty cool.

Since I think I am as tired as the little boy who is sleeping soundly in the other room, this will probably be pretty rambly. Consider yourself warned.

Nicholas and I got to the zoo when it opened, hoping to replicate our fun trip a couple weeks ago, but were very disappointed. Between the heat (nearing 90 and humid at 10am) and the hundreds of schoolkids (I counted at least 8 buses there when the zoo opened), neither Nicholas or I was having a very good time, so we left after about an hour.

I took this at the very beginning, before the school groups had caught up with us, and before the wheels came off the wagon:

From 2010 May

Nicholas then fell asleep about 5 minutes from home and so rather than having a birthday boy who had taken a 5-minute morning nap, I decided to just keep driving and go straight to our afternoon destination, which is 20 minutes further on the road I was already on. Since I hadn't planned for this, I hadn't packed us lunches, so Nicholas got a very special treat--his first Happy Meal at McDonalds!

After being the biggest brat I've ever known him to be while we were in line (so bad, in fact, that I was tempted to call it quits and take him home, even though we were all the way on the other side of the county), he calmed down once we started eating and snapped back into his normal self about halfway through lunch.

From 2010 May

Anyway, the Happy Meal was an interesting experiment. I would never have expected to get him one because they seem like a waste of money, but when I priced out the things I wanted to get him it actually made sense. So I got a 6-piece nuggets happy meal and a side of small fries and figured he would eat the apples, half the fries, and milk, along with the one jar of baby food that was randomly in the diaper bag, and I would eat the nuggets and the rest of the fries. Instead we split every item, with me eating roughly 2/3 of each. The little boy who hates meat apparently will eat McDonalds chicken nuggets. Which probably says something about the nuggets, right? We've tried giving him nuggets at home before to entice him to eat meat, with no luck. And it wasn't the fried breading because about half a nugget in I started stripping most of the breading off and he kept gulping them down. My guess is that it is that the meat in the nuggets is so processed that it is easy to chew.

After lunch we went next door to Storyville, which has got to be one of the coolest places on the planet. At least for a toddler. Have I mentioned that Nicholas is currently obsessed with magnets? Well he is, and today at Storyville he immediately found two magnet stations. Seriously, I didn't guide him at all, he was walking looking around and those caught his eye and he insisted we go over. I'm really not sure how he knew they were magnets.

He has figured out that for the magnets to stick he needs the colored side out, but he isn't reliable on remembering that he needs to put the magnet on open space. Here he is trying to find somewhere to stick the blue one:

From 2010 May

This set of magnets is pretty cool, but around the corner was an even cooler set. In the engineering section of Storyville there is a magnetic wall and a bunch of gear magnets. I don't know how else to describe them--if you line them up right you can make multiple magnets spin by spinning one.

From 2010 May

Nicholas obviously isn't up for the actual engineering element, but he loved moving them around and spinning them. He did occasionally line them up so that multiple spun, but I think that was pure chance.

Storyville really is pretty amazing. And it seems like each time we go there is something new that he has gotten old enough to play with, or play with differently. And it is free! The only down side is the drive, which is both long and often congested with bad traffic.

Tonight we did presents after Joe got home, but Nicholas was too worn out to really be very interested in them. And instead of another cake I made Nicholas cornbread. Joe and I decided that Nicholas would like that just as much and it was better for us not to eat a whole other cake.

And now Nicholas' first birthday is officially over. :( I had planned on writing a retrospective or summary post sometime today but haven't gotten to it and I need to get some work done tonight so it may have to wait until later in the week.

Happy Birthday, Nicholas!