I am not a fan of traditional kids birthday parties. Especially when they involve a bunch of germy little munchkins at our house around my brand new baby. Delia's friends (who are all very sweet): she sees them every day at school. Our house: she sees it every day at home. It just sounded like way too much work for me to make it fun. Princesses, pinatas, etc.
Last year we took Delia to the Little Rock Zoo for her birthday. She got to visit with her cousins and had a blast. SO, this year she had a cupcake party at school, then on Saturday we went to the brand new
Mississippi Children's Museum in Jackson. The grandparents made the short trip from Vicksburg and we had a fun lunch afterwards at the
Mellow Mushroom, which Grady said was just enough like a Disney movie to be fun for kids.
The museum had SO many different Mississippi-themed activity areas. Delia drove a tractor,
played dress up,
(she is all about princesses right now)
cooked in a kitchen,
climbed through an obstacle course,
saw the Between the Lions library play area (Mamas, let your kids watch this show on PBS! It is the new Sesame Street and is produced in MS),
played with magnets to make a story,
and played with puppets.
Our friends Amanda and Greg met us there with their girls Mina and Macy. The girls all play so well together!
This giant Scrabble board may have been my favorite (word nerd).
D is for Delia!
Delia ran around and found all the letters of her name all by herself.
Not much for these guys to do, so they found a rocking chair and just chilled. Papa's favorite thing!
At the Farmer's Market area, you could "scan" plastic fruits and veggies and nutritional info would pop up on the screen. Grandma 'Manda helps shop!
They had a big water feature you could play in, but we didn't have time to do everything, so Delia just sat on this big catfish.
You'd better believe we made time for the dancing room, which had costumes and a huge oversized juke box with working buttons that played fun songs.
There was also a "forest" and underground "tunnels" where you could explore and find native Mississippi animals like deer, skunks, owls,
and turtles.
Then on to lunch! Nana brought Delia a Birthday Girl shirt and we immediately got naked at the table and put it on.
Thank you Uncle Gerald and Aunt Sarah for the movies you sent! Delia LOVES them!
Goodies, goodies.
Our friends Truman and Mary live in Jackson so they came out too. Truman loves to hold babies! I told him the one rule of Baby Club was not to let the paci hit the restaurant floor. Guess what happened.
Princess stuff!
Chowing down. That pizza was GOOD.
The Mellow Mushroom people made Delia a yummy birthday brownie plate.
Macy, Amanda, and Mina try just a bite. It was such a fun day! Next post will be all about Brooks, I promise.
Brooks loves his swing. It has little birds and butterflies that circle around, and there is a big mirror right above his head where he can see himself.
Sometimes he watches himself very intently.
"Mo-om!"
Happy boy! This week I started adding 1 oz of formula "For Fussy and Gassy Babies" to each of Brook's bottles and he seems to be much more content. Maybe a coincidence, but it has been a very noticeable change. He is happy just to sit and look around during his "wake time," whereas before he would fuss. Hooray for happy babies!
