Birthday Party Weekend Part Two

Last week was Cruz' birthday party. And for him I guess the real highlight of the weekend was just that.  For Cruz the close second would be the fact that my parents came into town to help celebrate. I know that seeing Lolo and Lola was definitely her highlight last weekend. She's still asking where they are now.

Similar to Cruz, with the help of technologic marvels such as Skype and FaceTime, Whitney gets at least weekly chat session with my parents. These sessions certainly help because during this past visit there was no warm-up time needed for her to get comfortable with my parents. They came out of their car and she immediately went from my arms to my dad's, no complaint at all.

As grandparents do, they did their best to spoil their grandkids. Cruz finally got to open his beloved Buzz Lightyear. It came weeks before but we told Cruz that he had to wait until my parents came to open it.

This pic barely captures how excited he was.

Whitney, on the other hand, got much more sentimental gifts. 30 years ago there was the Cabbage Patch Kids Christmas frenzy. Somehow my parents came out of it with two dolls for my sister (and eventually I even got one). My parents had been holding onto them for years. Cruz inherited mine years ago (and much like me, didn't express much interest in it). My sisters' however, were being saved for her. But as my sister does not have a daughter, she graciously decided to give them to Whitney. 

When Whitney saw them, she gasped and then yelped in excitement. She immediately took to the bald one. The one with the curly blond hair though... well at first she played with it as if the doll were a monkey, complete with the "ooh ooh, ah ah" noises. The blond one has since been regulated to the corner where Whitney will occasionally point at it and say "No. No, baby." The bald one, however. Well, let's just say that Whitney was having some trouble sleeping through the night recently. Not anymore, now that the bald one accompanies her to bed every night.

Perhaps the best gift Whitney got overall though, was the vintage rocking chair that once belonged to my sister. Purchased around the time when she was Whitney's age, it finally got passed along to another girl. Whitney now will sometimes pass the time sitting in it, rocking her inherited cabbage patch doll, presumably to sleep.

This pic has been 30+ years in the making

My parents were so incredibly helpful with the party execution. With their assistance we picked up the rental tables and chairs and were able to bring everything to the park in one go (granted via all three of our collective cars). The party would have been so chaotic without another two set of hands.

The rest of their trip was spent visiting Cruz' new preschool, watching the kids in swim class and simply enjoying them in general.

Cruz celebrates his birthday at preschool, thus the crown.

From the perspective of Sue and me, we love having them here. We get free date nights, two more sets of eyes to watch the kids, and wonderful Filipino comfort food that evoke childhood memories. Most importantly, being a parent helps me appreciate all the love, thought, effort, and anguish that took place in raising me. So I suppose my highlight for last weekend was similar to Whitney's, and that is spending time with my parents.