Not a Party Until Somebody Vomits!

Today for Lily's birthday we told her that she was in charge (within reason!) and she could call the shots! We celebrate Lily's birthday (with a party) farther in the month of January for a couple reasons. 1) It is REALLY close to two major holiday's, and 2) Lily shares her birthday with her Cousin Juice and 3) if we wait just 2 more weeks she can celebrate not only her birthday but also her homecoming day! We have done this since she has come home and works very nicely.

Last year we started letting her pick where she wanted to go/do with a little help. This year, I asked one afternoon and she told me she wanted to go see the Dolphin Show at the Aquarium! So this morning after she picked her breakfast of toasted PB & J, with milk. We headed out to the Aquarium.

We were literally about 2 blocks from the garage on a one way street and a Mini-Van came barreling around the corner coming at us head on!! Chris blared the horn and the man (also with his family) looked about as shocked as we did, gave the obligatory hand of 'oops my bad!' backed out onto his road. I was upset that this had happened, but I had to giggle when I saw his wife's mouth moving a million times a minute and looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock!

The rest of our 2 block journey was quite uneventful! We parked and headed in. We only had about 45 minutes to wait for the Dolphin Show so we didn't want to get too involved with the anything. We let the girls play on the bubble tubes for a few minutes and then headed over to watch the Dolphins in their tank before the show. Lily was in heaven!!

The show was great! Charlotte was MUCH more into it this time. When we had gone over the summer she was not too impressed at all. This time though she was clapping, and waving at the dolphins for the whole show. I don't think we even pulled many snacks out. Lily loves the show and just sat there fascinated by it. Every time one would jump out of the water she would gasp and her mouth would fall open!

When the show was over we made our way back down to the underwater tank to say our last good-byes to the dolphins. Lily then wanted to see the Jellies, and the Sharks. The line for the Jellies was quite long, so we headed over to find the sharks. If you haven't been to the Baltimore Aquarium, the area they keep the shark tanks in is very dark and ominous. Lily has, in the past, had problems dealing with the darkness of it. She has never flat out refused to go through it, she didn't love it. I was surprised when she said she really wanted to go see them. We made it all the way to the top of the escalators. We told her that we were at that the sharks and she told us 'ok, I am a little scared, but I have you guys so I won't be too scared.' :-) She did really great! Even walked by herself at some points!!

After that we headed back to Jellies! The lines were all gone. Charlotte really likes this! She just stood in her spot and stared! Lily walked right up to the one tank and literally talked to the Jelly. She told the Jelly it was her birthday, apparently it was the Jelly's birthday as well and the Jelly smiled at her. It was soo cute, her exchange even made a hardcore-tween aged boy smile a little.

After we were done with the Jellies it was well past time for lunch. The only other request Lily made for her birthday was to eat out somewhere for dinner. We promised her Pizza Hut. However there was no way we were taking them anywhere for dinner after having walked them most of the day with no nap. We thought quick on our feet, we needed to sell to her that lunch at the Aquarium was just as nice as Pizza Hut. In the end we think she just wanted to eat out. She was very excited that we were going to have lunch there and was just fine having a 'big girl pizza' brought to our house!

I will admit the girls really kept it together for the day. We knew we were on borrowed time when Charley ate her lunch with her head on the table. After lunch was all done we wiped everybody up and headed for the gift shop. We left Lily pick out a new doll she picked a Jelly Fish she is calling Flounder, and Charlotte won Chris over when she picked up a baby seal and said, 'Look Daddy a Sea Puppy!' We paid and headed for the van.

Charlotte didn't make it out of the city before she literally collapsed in her car seat. Lily though was up and wired! We were about 5-10 minutes from home and she started singing a song over and over and over again. After about the 7Th time, we asked her to please pick a new song. She started giggling, and kept singing, and laughing. What really can you do about that?! We teased back with her and she would just keep singing, and laughing. At one point she got herself laughing really hard and then she got quiet. She has had a runny nose (again) for about 2 days...yeah singing + laughing + snot = you guess it vomit! sigh....

The great news is that it really was just that, she was completely normal the rest of the afternoon/evening. We did get our pizza ordered in and she was sung a beautiful albeit, off key version of Happy Birthday by her loving family! She had a bath (as she requested) and had two books at bedtime.

All in all I think that Miss Lily enjoyed herself just a tiny bit more then we did today!