Biz e-Birthday Bash

The Monkey Bus

 

Last Saturday’s birthday party was a success! No one puked, nothing got broken and I actually had time to sit and enjoy a glass of wine before it was done. The wow factor this year was the Monkey Bus.  The Monkey Bus has made the rounds to several other neighborhood parties, so this time it was our turn. It is a purple school bus with no seats. Inside are gymnastics mats, a mini rock-climbing wall and a zip line.  Hard to believe all that can fit in a school bus, but it does.  The Monkey Bus also plays fun music while the kids bounce and slide around. It’s a great time for little ones—especially when ** wait for it** the bus pulls up to YOUR house!  (The best part for me was that it got the kids out of my hair for an hour!) 

 

Biz e-Baby1 and Biz e-Baby2

After the Monkey Bus hoopla was over, all the guests filed back inside to eat cake and open presents. (Side note: It was the third year in a row that I forgot to take the ice cream out of the freezer. Poor ice creamless kids!)  Once the last gift was unwrapped, all the tiny guests, including my daughter, were well overdue for a nap. Kids had begun chasing (partially torturing)  each other and my two elderly Yorkies around the house.  It was time for everyone to go! So they did.   

 However, the most noteworthy moment of the day was first thing in the morning. Before any guests arrived, I gave Biz e-Baby1 a single present. Biz e-Dad and I thought it would be best if she didn’t have many people around when she opened her birthday surprise – Dusty the talking vacuum (if you don’t get the significance, read my “When Noo-noos Attack” blog for the back story.) 

It was a crap shoot. On one hand, Dusty was the only toy our daughter had talked about non-stop for the three weeks leading up to her birthday, so I held out hope she’d be happy that her hints were heard. On the other hand, we’d been burned by this sort of thing before. Enthusiasm in the store doesn’t always carry-on once the toy comes home. And, of course, there’s the obvious potential risk that her extreme, irrational vacuum fear could bubble to the surface when she saw the whites of Dusty’s googley eyes. 

Drumroll ************ SHE LOVED IT! In fact, her attachment for Dusty in just the last four days seems to have somehow conquered her fear of her toy Dirt Devil vacuum as well. (That thing had been exiled in our laundry room closet never to show itself again—until last weekend.) Biz e-Baby1 has embraced the toy vacuum community with open arms!   

The Gift is a Hit

 

I haven’t seen her reaction yet to the vacuum population at large because I want to take things slow.  But, it seems we are making progress in the area of vacuum relations and taking forward steps to recovering from Noo-noophobia. 

 My baby’s growing up.