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Today's photo brought to you by Miguel. We went to my cousin's daughter's second birthday at the Pump It Up in Belmont today. It was a later party, starting at 6PM. Az loves birthday parties; Happy Birthday is the only song she knows most of the words to and she sings it every single day, so she was excited about the party all day and was irritated that we weren't leaving sooner. Of course she fell asleep just before we arrived at the party, and was nice and grumpy when we woke her up and brought her in. She took a while to warm up to the noisy, chaotic room and I didn't help things by bringing her down a jumpy slide before she was ready. I knew she would love the slide once she tried it, but she was still much too tired to be giving anything a try.

After watching the kids climb up one of the slides for a while she decided she would go too, but once up she just wanted to climb back down. I eventually coaxed her into going down the slide again and of course this time she loved it and wanted to go down a hundred more times. Unfortunately she warmed up to the jumpies just in time for the staff to usher us out for cake. Even cake couldn't compare to the fun of a jumpy so she asked to go back to the jumpies between bites. The next morning when she woke up she immediately asked to go jump. Hopefully she'll remember how much she loves them the next time we're near a jumpy so she can get down to business immediately.

Z had a little bit of a rough time at the party as well. The chaos of the party got him over-excited and there was one particular adult not in the family there whom never reacts well to Z. I wish Az had had more time to jump but the party ending when it did was probably best for Z. Once in the car he was immediately calm and compliant. That's the way it always is, I wish he would just realize how much he benefits from a self-imposed time out and cool down sometimes. People always see the overwhelmed part of Z, not the introspective Z that wants to talk about how he could improve things in the future. (Of course as soon as he gets into the next exciting situation he forgets everything we've discussed though.)