Birthday recap

Please indulge me in a few more birthday posts, I have so many pictures I want to share with you from all the events of the last week. We celebrated the bean's birthday with family the weekend before the big day and thankfully the weather cooperated, since we held the party at a park near our house.




I DIYed the happy birthday banner and hung paper lanterns from the rafters of the shelter. We also covered the picnic tables with brown paper and provided crayons for scribbling with. It might be hard to see in the pictures, but we had a few dozen round lollipops that we stuck into polka dotted pails to fit in with our polka dot theme.

The bean loved hanging out with all her family and friends, but the bubble machine may have been her favorite part.

When everyone gathered around and sang happy birthday, she was a bit intimidated but, thanks to a happy camcorder accident, we ended up singing twice and she loved it the second time around. I highly recommend singing twice!

And the birthday cupcake wasn't half bad either.

A few days later, on the bean's actual birthday, we went to the zoo.

She especially loved the little tubes in the prairie dog habitat.

But the ducks were a close second.

After all that excitement, we still had more presents to open, pictures to take and, of course, another round of happy birthday.

She crashed shortly after this picture was taken. It was a good day.

The Pox

The day before the bean's birthday, she woke up with red spots all over her body. I was trying to think of anything new she was exposed to at the same time that the boy was telling me it didn't look like hives or a heat rash. Then we remembered that the bean had an unexplained fever the night before and it all fell into place . . . the chicken pox!!

Honestly, we were still debating whether or not to vaccinate her at her one year appointment, so we weren't heartbroken at the thought of the bean ending up with natural immunity (no boosters required!), especially since it looks to be a mild case. Its a mystery to us how she ended up with it, though. We don't know of any friends or relatives or other children at daycare who've had it and I know of people who've taken their children to pox parties to no avail, so I'm surprised we ended up with it without even trying.

Like I said, its a mild case and the bean is fighting it off the way she approaches most things--with laughter and smiles.