Saturday, February 01, 2003
Vanessa officially turned five on Thursday, but today was the day for the party.
The day started out pretty much as usual -- with Annie in the baby carrier on my back we all walked over to Vanessa's ballet class. When we left the streets were extremely slippery from a light coating of ice, forcing me to take to the street to climb the hill to the recreation centre. Vanessa did ballet, Annie played in the adjoining play room, and we managed to kill a couple of hours there in order to meet Erika after her chiropractic appointment at the local Licks.
When we got home I turned on the radio and heard a brief snippet about the Columbia tragedy. I whipped open the notebook, and sure enough, there on Slashdot and next on CNN.com was news about it. Sad news.
After all the play, Annie was exhausted and so was Vanessa, so they went down for a nap in the early afternoon. Then we got started on decorating the house and getting it ready for the sleep-over party for Vanessa. Erika blew up some balloons and strung pink paper ribbons in the dining room, and got the loot bags ready. My main contribution towards this was cleaning the house up.
The fun started around 5pm when the first of the parents delivered their daughters along with a travel bag and a mattress. Wanting to keep things to a manageable level, only 3 other girls were invited, and they were Samantha, Naomi and Nicole -- the first two friends from school and the third a friend she hasn't seen for a while. We set up their mattresses up on the third floor in Annie's room, with the intention of putting Annie to sleep in her Laundry Room crib for the evening.
Pizza for dinner. A game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Then the opening of presents. Playing in Vanessa's room. Then a big bubble bath in the big bathtub.
There was one minor meltdown: this was Nicole's first sleep-over at a friend's place and she felt overwhelmed by it all. In the end her Mother took her home for the night, but she too had a great time in the bubble bath -- especially when her Mom was there to see her.
We tried putting them to bed at around 9pm, but they were too excited and in the end, around 11pm-ish Erika decided it best to separate them into different rooms so that they could get some sleep.
I had a rough night's sleep, primarily because of Annie's occasional cries during the night. Turns out that she had good reason -- in the middle of the night Erika went to check on her and found that she had been sick. At one point I drowsily held on to Annie in bed while Erika cleaned up the crib and bedsheets, trying to keep he entertained and happy while trying to stay awake.
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