Jon's Birthday

I've had this sitting in my email drafts for days, and I'm finally posting it now...

This was an exciting weekend for Devon, since we had friends over for dinner and these friends have a child about Devon's age and then my mom threw a birthday party for Jon (and there's nothing more exciting than a birthday party). Last weekend when we were at Pajaro Dunes, I was surfing the web and ran into a series of Chowhound postings lauding the Freedom Meat Locker in Freedom, California (which is quite close to Watsonville). These postings were so positive that I rather bullied my dad into driving to Freedom to visit the Meat Locker. It turned out to be this odd little building back behind some apartments that at one time looked like it had been a slaughterhouse (it still had the old metal meat tracks and hooks in the ceiling); there was a line out the door, however (always a good sign) and a lot of space devoted to real butchers (in other words, no meat in plastic wrap here). That emboldened me, so I needed up buying their "barbecue package," which included an assortment of meats -- so we came back to San Francisco with a cooler full of beef and needed some people to help us eat it. One of the postings in particular recommended the tri-tip, and since we purchased two marinated tri-tips, we invited our friends Sharky and Naomi (and their son, Billy) over for dinner to sample one.

Billy is just about the same age as Devon, and of course she loves having other children over. It's always interesting to me how totally unacquainted children at this age, at least, can start playing together without blinking an eye. It's what child specialists call "parallel play," so it doesn't involve playing together as much as playing next to someone (each child doing his own thing); but I'm always amazed at how much Devon likes it and how she and other children settle right in to play. Dinner ran late, of course, and Naomi was prescient enough to bring pajamas and such for Billy -- but Devon insisted on having a bath before getting her jammies on, so we ran one and both of them had a ball together in the bath. A lot of the time at our house either Walt or I get in the bath with Devon, mainly because she wants someone to play with (which is great for her, but I don't always want to take a bath at 7pm) -- this worked out fabulously, since we just had to do adult rotations through the bathroom and the kids had a grand old time in the tub.

It was rather rainy this weekend (a good thing, since it's been a dry winter), so Devon and I went to the relocated Steinhart Aquarium in our quest to find something fun indoors. The usual location of the aquarium is Golden Gate Park, but the building is being totally rebuilt at the moment (it looks really cool during the construction -- apparently it will be the largest green building in the world) so the exhibits have been relocated temporarily to a building South of Market. I can hardly remember the old Steinhart, but of course this temporary location is much smaller and there aren't nearly as many exhibits. Devon had fun there, but she didn't spent that much time looking at the fish -- there was a small hands-on section upstairs for small children, and we spent a lot of time there. They also had an exhibit about dinosaurs with a movie about allosauruses (well-done CGI), and she was quite entranced with it. Overall, though, it was a bit disappointing; somehow I expected a lot more, even though I knew that it was a smaller location and such. I don't know whether I expected Devon to like it more or whether I just had expectations that were too high. The new aquarium doesn't open until October 2008, so we'll be stuck with the temporary exhibits for a while yet.

On Saturday my mom dragged Jon along in planning a big birthday bash for him, complete with catering and a big, fancy birthday cake. We went over early, since Walt had organized the music (all 60s and 70s hits) and needed to set it up. Devon had a ball at the party; she's already familiar with my mom's house anyway, but having all of the people around was very exciting for her. At one point, she insisted on bringing her toy stroller down from upstairs; and then she proceeded to power through the crowds, running over toes and clipping ankles. I don't think that made her very popular with the crowds, but she had a great time.

She was really keyed up because of the party, but at about 9pm (an hour after her regular bedtime), Walt and I finally got her upstairs with some milk and stories. We were on my mom's bed, with her lying down and half asleep, so we had high hopes -- but at that moment, the crowd started singing Happy Birthday to Jon. Devon sat bolt upright, said, "Happy birthday song. Cake! Let's go downstairs!" We went downstairs, and she was so excited that she muscled through the crowd right up to the table next to the cake and was examining it so thoroughly that Jon almost couldn't cut it. She ended up having cake, ice cream and then ate the chocolate ribbons on the top of it. Despite all of that sugar, she fell asleep in the car almost immediately (much to our great relief).