Turning 2, Turning 5

It’s birthday season again. Since October 23, Lucia has been a bouncing, jumping, screaming, ridiculous 2. Yesterday, Celia turned a radiant 5. (I also turned 38 in September, though thankfully there was little hoopla surrounding this.)

We celebrated both birthdays in style.

Lucia is in a tough spot. She has a couple of toddler friends at daycare, but she really counts Celia’s and Andres’ gangs as her own. She is already running with an older crowd. This meant that most of the guests at her party were the young children of our friends, several of whom she had only seen a couple times at ultimate this summer. Poor thing.

Of course, this did not deter her from having a good time. She was a bundle of energy, laughing and clapping and running and jumping. (I love watching her jump. She bends her knees, gets low to the ground, and then just explodes up and off the ground with her whole body. It seems ridiculous that with all this momentum, she only gets about 2 inches off the ground.)

Parties for the youngest children often feel like exercises in herding drunk cats, and this was not much of an exception. Two and three years olds will basically do whatever they want. But there were some moments of shared fun and unity, like the indoor parachute, and the inflatable bouncy track that kept all of them tumbling with glee. Oh--this was also a Dora the Explorer party, meaning that all the games had a distinct "Dora" feel (they were going on an adventure, somewhere, and had to avoid Swiper). Lucia was appropriately dressed in a Dora t-shirt.

At least Celia enjoyed the parachute.

Lucia loved being the star of the show, but her brother did not do as well. He was just too cool for all those simple skipping and jumping games that the kids were playing. And for much of the party, he seemed determined to let everybody know how he felt.

Lucia tries to rally her brother.

It was Dora, Dora, Dora everywhere.

I was annoyed. Sad, too. Andres loves Lucia. And he is a great big brother to her. He helps her get out of the crib in the morning, he plays catch with her, he reads to her, and generally tolerates her criminal behavior much better than I do. He eggs her on, in fact. His antics made me wonder if those days are coming to an end now that she is two. How sad that would be for everyone.

A few weeks later, it was Celia's turn to celebrate. Thematically, her party was similar, though it was done on a much bigger scale. And, of course, with Elsa and Anna replacing Dora.

We traded in Waltham's The Little Gym for Newton's Exxcel gymnastics center (home of Olympian Aly Reisman and potential Aly Reismans everywhere). There, among foam pits and swinging ropes and trampolines, Celia celebrated with much of her preschool class and many of her good friends. She wore her finest pink tutu for the special occasion.

Trampolining with friends.

Some of the older party attendees raised concerns about the safety of having so many kids jumping into pits together with seemingly little supervision. "Surely this is an accident waiting to happen?" they said. Perhaps. But I challenged the concerned to tell me how this party was any more dangerous than a typical Sunday afternoon at my house, when Lucia is jumping off the couch and Andres is playing indoor soccer in our living room. I won that argument.

A happy 5 year old.

Don't let those faces fool you...these two are double trouble.

The wonderful thing about a gymnastics/free play party is that everybody can find their niche. Some kids bounded from station to station; others hung out on the mats the whole time. Everyone was happy. And Celia was the perfect hostess. She shines when she is among her friends. She loves them, and she loves being surrounded by them--boys, girls, kids who are younger, kids who are older. Anyone and everyone.

She still hasn't grown out of those cheeks.

Two and five. And seven. How stressful it can be to watch them grow up, and yet how wonderful it is to celebrate these moments with them.