Happy Birthday Party Leelo!

Yesterday was Leelo's birthday party. Normally birthday party days are all-out freakouts for me, in terms of house prepping and coordinating. However, yesterday I was sick, I decided to eschew the usual customized gifties, we didn't invite all that many people, and Leelo doesn't ask for much in terms of special entertainment. So I ordered a jumpy house and some Indian food, decided to buy a cake, and we went on with our usual Saturday morning routine instead.

It turned out to be a fantastic day. Beautiful weather.

We toodled over to the cafe, where Iz's head almost exploded--Ira Russskin was there! She was beyond excited. She got to meet him and talk to him and tell him that "we voted for you" and that she was so glad he won. Ira: "My, what a precocious little voter!" I got to shake his hand and give him our congratulations as well, and told him his victory was the one bright spot in the election results.

All sorts of friends showed up to the cafe, in a perfectly synchronized way so that we got to share our table with four different families, without anyone having to find seating elsewhere or wait a turn. Almost all the menfolk are bike buddies with Seymour, so he got to arrange a ride for later this weekend. My favorite omelet was on the menu. Lots of kiddies for our kiddies to play with.

Then we went to the store to get all the food I decided to buy instead of prepare. There I had either a pre-migraine aura or a symptom of incipient pre-eclampsia--flashing colored lights took over my entire field of vision and made it most distracting to try to select the proper crackers for our cheese (so much so that I ended up with sesame crackers instead of plain water crackers--oh well). The lights went away after about ten minutes but left me feeling kind of woozy. (And yes, I did contact my doctor's office, but the doctor on call has yet to call back.)

To home, where we had 90 minutes for both Seymour and me to shower and prep the house. Thankfully Badger, Rook, and Moomin thought the party was an hour earlier than we did, and arrived just in time to be put in charge of all the decorations. Whew! Heroes!

Then Ep agreed to pick up all the Indian food I'd forgotten about retrieving from the restaurant. She also brought a scrumptious chocolate cake, the twin of the one she'd made for Clyde's birthday on Friday. She did all this schlepping even though the rest of her family was sick, and she was the only one who could attend the party. Bless her.

And the party itself was melllllow good fun. The kids mostly stayed in the bouncy slide house. Seymour took pity on my being lumbering and ill, and watched Leelo pretty much the entire time. Iz is now self-contained. We eventually sang Happy Birthday to Leelo, who at the time didn't really seem to care much, but later kept singing the song to himself. MB showed up even though she's deeply entrenched in the aftermath of moving, and her Sophie2 demonstrated the same delight as Leelo with the bouncy house--I don't think she came out of it for more than a minute the entire time--plus she took turns with Leelo in coming up to Seymour to get tickles through the bouncy house net, and said "Hi, Squid!" when prompted. Seeing how much she and Leelo are improving makes my heart go pit-a-pat.

When the party was over (after only three hours, strangely), I spent an hour and the last of my energy reserves in a cleaning blast, then had a bath and went to sleep around 7:30. I woke to a completely clean house and kitchen, courtesy of my partner. A truly wonderful day. Rah!