Today was Daughter #2's fifth birthday. I was up pretty much all night last night getting her "big" present put together (The Wife, in some fit of lunacy, bought her a seven-piece drum set which needed a LOT of assembly with only the vaguest of "instructions"). running out to the grocery store at 2am to get flowers, and sticking bows, etc. on the various (and numerous) packages I'd wrapped yesterday afternoon. We, of course, got up at the crack of dawn so she could start shredding paper, so I'm guessing I'm running on under 3 hours of sleep today.
This was further inconvenienced by my having to run off to the near northwest sdie to rent a car this morning. I dropped Daughter #1 off at school, grabbed the 36 (which just happened by at that point) for a shortcut to the El, took the Red Line up to Belmont, and then took the Belmont bus out to Cicero to the nearest Enterprise rental place that was honoring the $9.95/day weekend promo rate. The Wife needs the car for a meeting tomorrow afternoon, but we figured it was going to make things a lot easier today to have a car as well.
I stopped on the way back from to-hell-and-gone at the Office Depot on Ohio to pick up some more packing stuff for over at my Mom's place, and then picked up The Wife and #2 at American Girl (where they had been exchanging something) and ran us over to Ed Debevic's for lunch. What a pisser ... they have this big parking lot out front, but it's now ALL valet ... so we had ro run around the area looking for a meter!
Daughter #2 had decided that she wanted to do her birthday party at her daycare ... although she didn't want to GO in to her daycare today until the party. So, we'd done up goodie bags, gotten party supplies, stuffed a pinata, and gotten balloons and juice and cupcakes. We'd managed to spring #1 out of school an hour early so she could come to the party, and got everything ready to go only about a half an hour later than we'd been planning. Things went fine up there, although it seemed like a hell of a lot of money thrown at a half an hour of activity. Oh well. Daughter #2 and her classmates seemed to have enjoyed it.
Once we got done with that I dropped everybody off and went in search of a parking place, which I lucked out on ... a spot only a block away, but (unfortunately) a 9pm meter. We hung out at home, caught some calls from relatives checking in with birthday wishes, and then (after my ducking out to make sure we were OK with the parking), took a cab down to the RainForest Cafe, which is pretty much The Girls' favorite place to go (I wouldn't say "to eat" since they barely touch their food).
{edit ... 10:15am ... fell asleep while writing last night and posted this incomplete}
The RainForest Cafe was "frustrating" in that we'd all had quite a lot to eat already (with the Ed Debevic's lunch preceding the cupcakes, etc. at her school party ... plus the day started off with Krispy Kremes!), so not only was I not wanting an entree, but The Girls were into that "want everything but eat nothing" mode. #2 was very unhappy that we did not order their "volcano" dessert (brownies & ice cream with fudge "lava" and sparklers) but we'd had donuts and cupcakes already and had a big "mermaid" cake waiting for us at home (our local Jewel grocery store does these cool cakes with a Barbie in them ... a dome-shaped cake with Barbie from the waist up sticking out of the top ... usually they're "Barbie in a ball gown" but this time it was "Barbie as a mermaid", with a frosting tail wrapping around a big green "sea rock"). Neither girl ate much of anything beyond the combo appetizer platter we started with, and, frankly, spent most of the dinner (while The Wife and I were eating burgers) downstairs in the gift shop. One thing that I hate about gong there is that it is nearly impossible (well, if The Wife is with us ... I'd get them out of there empty handed!) to not buy them some toy in the shop. The Wife is super indulgent when it comes to that, which drives me nuts.
Anyway, we came home, had some cake and everybody crashed. Big day. Whoopie!
