Birthday weekend, Part 2

We had a delightful weekend -- and a busy one -- celebrating Rachel again ("I like this idea of extended birthdays," Drew said. Me, too.) On Saturday, we did the following:

--Got Mommy-and-Rachel pedicures at the nail place I usually go to, then took Rachel to get a donut at Dunkin' Donuts. We ran into one of her friends there, Sammy, and her mom. They were about to go buy Rachel's present before her party. Rachel and I had a really lovely time together -- she kept saying, "I love you, Mom." She's really happy when we're just...together.

--Got home to find that Drew had done a bunch of errands that morning instead of going to the gym, which was very generous of him, even though I had encouraged him to exercise. We all piled into his car and headed to Uncle Dan's. (Dan asked me to bring him some scones from Village Sweet, a bakery near our house whose scones I brought by the last time we visited.)

--Had a lovely two-hour visit with Dan, who is back in his apartment and seemed in fine spirits. He gave Rachel a stuffed turtle, which she immediately named Ella after throwing her arms around Dan and thanking him profusely. She spent most of the visit reading while Dan, Drew and I caught up.

--From Dan's, we headed straight to the American Girl Doll store at Tyson's Corner. The party was a meal with cake and ice cream for dessert and the idea was for the girls to explore the store afterward with their moms. All the girls had brought their dolls, and the dolls had their own mini seats at the table (and got mini cups and saucers). The food was quite good -- each girl had her choice of appetizer and main course, plus drinks (and everyone decided to order smoothies, which cost extra, but as Drew said -- what the heck, it's just money, right? Actually the whole thing turned out to be less expensive than last year's jungle-themed party at a local community center).

Rachel got a crown, and she insisted on sitting between Mommy and Daddy. I sat next to her friend, Dani, from synagogue. Dani started off quite shy because she didn't know anyone (the other 5 girls were all from McKinley), but then we got into a nice conversation aided by the conversation cue cards the American Girl Doll folks had cleverly put at each table: If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be? Etc.

The sour note, of course, was Sidney. When she got her smoothie, which was strawberry, she took her straw and blew it straight at Drew's chest, splotching his shirt with smoothie. He took the smoothie away and put it on a neighboring table, saying, "Okay, you're done." She pouted for five to 10 minutes. He said, "If I give it back to you, are you going to spit it at me or anyone else again?" She said "no," sulkily, then Drew gave it back to her. She decided she didn't like it, gave it to Simone, another little girl, who promptly drank it all.

We had encouraged all the parents to drop off their kids, and one parent looked at me and said, "You're so brave! This is so nice of you to do all of this!" (Being able to order a cocktail of champagne and peach flavoring helped -- those American Girl Doll folks are not stupid by allowing parents to order alcohol to cope with being surrounded by squealing little girls.) Sidney's mom and dad, who are divorced, both showed up -- Sidney's mom to give her her backpack and her dad to take her off to do something else. And Sidney threw A FIT. She clearly didn't want to leave, since Rachel and I and Sammy and Sammy's mom were planning to explore the store, and Sidney desperately wanted to join with HER mommy, but it was her dad's day to have her and he had other plans. Rachel gave me an embarrassed look when Sidney had her meltdown, but none of us could do anything except leave the scene.

Sammy, Rachel, Sammy's mom and I explored the store, and I had a nice talk with Sammy's mom, whom I didn't know very well, while Drew brought all the presents and leftover cake to the car. Finally we all left at around 7. "This is my best birthday EVER!" Rachel said, walking from the car to the house.

We had planned to attend the block party up the street that had begun at 3, but none of us really had the energy. Drew seized the last bit of daylight to open the lawn while I supervised Rachel opening her presents ("I'm embarrassed to ask you if I can do something," she said. "What?" I asked. "I'm afraid you'll think I'm greedy," she said. "What is it?" I said again. "I want to open my presents," Rachel said. "SURE!" I replied).

By the time we cleaned up the wrapping and put everything away it was time for bed. We wished Rachel a very very happy birthday again, and then Drew and I decamped for the basement to watch "House of Cards." All in all, a great day!