Splish Splash

We made it through Kieran's second birthday party. It was a success, especially after I pared down the guest list from last year to exclude people without kids. Last year, we invited tons of people, everyone came, and I was frazzled - especially since my mother was in town and "helping." (Which really means  just creating more stress.) The invites also went out quite late since the party was supposed to be THIS weekend, until we realized that Eric is out of town this weekend with his band. 

Of course, the weather forecast was threatening thunderstorms, but instead we got a blistering heat wave with full on humidity. At least the kids could cool down with their water toys, but the adults literally had to sweat it out. - although the Slip N' Slide looked quite tempting. Even the baby was too hot, resulting a newborn strip down - a perk at that age.

Sure the party is work, but overall, the major time sucker is the cake. I decided this year to do individual cakes, covered in melted chocolate icing. Not only did I grossly underestimate how much chocolate I would need, necessitating an emergency 11th hour chocolate run, but it takes about 5 times as long as regular icing and costs 10 times as much. But it was quite delicious, so overall it was worth it.  

Kieran received his own wooden train set, which I think he has played with non stop since we set it up. He even takes the train cars to bed with him and wakes up still clutching them to his chest. He now officially even prefers the train set to going outside which is sort of a nice change.

We did go to a new park yesterday -one right down the lake. There is a little beach, so Kieran got to dip his feet into Lake Ontario which looked to refreshing and pristine, but which, in actuality, is teeming with bacteria and filled with sludge. There is also, we discovered, a splash pad at this park. We weren't prepared for water play, but it was so hot that I let him run in with his shorts and TV shirt on. The boy is a real screamer too.  By far the loudest child there, squealing with glee every time he got splashed. (Which made me wonder...why isn't everyone squealing when they get splashed? At what age do we stopping finding this utterly joyful?)

There were maybe only about 20 other kids there (three of which were named Nathan) as it was still morning, but, the vast majority that were there were accompanied by their Filipino nannies who all hang out in large groups, more or less oblivious to everyone else.  The few other parents were clearly stay at home Splash Pad professionals. Standing at the edge of the water in their Save Darfur T-shirts, feeding their kids organic granola bars, and fully equipped with blankets, picnic baskets and water toys. They all generally sat together...although I'm not sure if they came together or if that's what stay at home moms do. I was totally out of place with my hot jeans, lugging a huge diaper bag that has a million things in it, none of which were towels, blankets or a change of clothes for Kieran.  Also, thinking that we were just going to be hanging out at the playground, I had also stupidly decided to forgo the stroller and brought Kaya in her awkward car carrier,  a cumbersome nightmare if ever there was one. 

I finally left dragging a soaking wet toddler and a wailing underfed and undernapped baby. Although they all totally ignored me, I'm quite sure that as we left, the Nannies and Mommies were all rolling their eyes at my unpreparedness. Or maybe not. But I was glad to escape back to my air-conditioned house, feed my child his Zoodles (which, btw, do NOT resemble any animals that I can think of) away from any watchful eyes. And once both kids were napping, I did a bit of research into Darfur.  Just in case.