The girls woke up happy and for a little while, Clara, Jane, and I hung out on Clara's bed. Clara pointed to one stuffed animal at a time and said, for example, "Gray Mouse sleep?" Then I would tuck Gray Mouse under the Marauder's Map blanket next to Clara and we'd pretend he was snoring, and then she'd ask for another. At the peak she had Gray Mouse, Cat, her sippy cup, Elephant, and Bobo all tucked in to "sleep" with her.
Jane kept trying to grab the sippy cup and other animals even if I gave her different toys to play with. She and Clara often are most interested in the specific toy the other is playing with, haha.
Jack and I got the girls dressed in their matching "Happy Birthday" shirts that (I believe) Beth had bought for them. I was hoping Jane would take her "I've been up for an hour and now need a morning nap" nap on time so she would wake up on time and we could get to the train museum (technically the Northern California Railroad Museum) early. But Jane didn't want to go to sleep. Eventually I let her cry it out and after about five minutes she passed out.
By then Mom had arrived and she and Clara and I visited. Clara ate Cocoa Pebbles (and got them everywhere) and we listened to Spotify and I tried to clean up the apartment more in anticipation of Renata coming to visit later in the afternoon.
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| Clara just hanging out in the laundry basket while we cleaned up. |
Jane slept longer than she typically does in the morning, and I actually went in and woke her up near 11am. I fed her one more time and then we all got ready to leave for thet rain museum. I put on Clara's shoes and coat before the rest of us were completely ready, which means she stood as close as possible to the front door holding her blanket and sippy cup and continually looking over her shoulder wondering why we weren't leaving yet. It was pretty cute.
It didn't take us long to get to old town Sacramento, and Mom paid the $10 for parking so we wouldn't have to worry about leaving the museum to feed the meter or move the car. We brought the double stroller with us. I love that thing. Clara can see just fine from the front seat and it makes it a lot easier to move the girls around.
There is a decent sized train in the lobby when you first walk in and wait to buy tickets. Certainly the train is vastly bigger than any toy train we have, and Clara was pretty interested in it. I didn't realize, though, how humongous the trains are in the actual museum. The first room you walk into has a very high ceiling nad is designed to look like a mountain area. Clara was pretty impressed with the huge black engine--and when I learned the engine was one of the originals from the first California railroads, I was pretty impressed too.
We walked past several large trains until we got to the part of the museum where you can actually go up into the cars and look outside. We checked out a mail car and a car from the "bullet train" from the 1960s. We also looked at the inside of (I think) an oil engine, which had a flickering orange light where the fire box would be. Clara was very interested in that.
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| Sitting together on the Bullet Train. |
There was one train that had a row of telephones receivers hooked up next to it; you could pick them up and listen to a recording of the information about the train. I think that's the first time in Clara's life she's seen an old school telephone headset (as opposed to cell phones). She tested it out but if she put her ear to the earpiece, the mouthpiece was too far from her face, and vice versa. She kept moving her face back and forth to try to fit it to the phone, haha.
Once we had finished exploring the ground floor we realized our map said the third floor has a whole kids section. That was easily the best part of the museum. There was a beautiful and elaborate trainset with at least four trains running in different directions on different levels. It had several bridges and tunnels and a hot air balloon. Clara stared at it for a very long time, which was fine with me because I enjoyed checking out all the detail. It reminded me of Grandpa Benoist and I thought about how much he would have enjoyed that set and this museum trip with us. <3
Clara was reluctant to leave the set until she saw all of the kids train sets (set up at kid-height tables) in the next part of the museum. There was also an electric Thomas the train running on a relatively small track that had a big plastic bubble in its center. Kids could crawl under the table and stand up in the bubble to watch the train run around them. Clara loved that too.
After she watched the Thomas train for a quite a while she emerged and played with the toy (Brio) train sets too.
By now we had been at the museum about two hours and I was tired and I could tell both girls were tired. We packed them up to head home. On the way out we stopped by the gift store and got a penny pressed as a souveneir. We let Clara hold it as we went back to the car.
It wasn't five minutes after buckling the girls in that they both passed out on the way home. And, amazingly, they stayed asleep as we moved them into the apartment: Clara slept in her jacket on her bed, and Jane slept in the carseat in our room, both for over an hour.
During that quiet time Mom baked the gluten free birthday cake and I went through a bunch of my photos for Facebook. Renata texted to say she was running a bit late, which actually works out fine because it gave the girls more quiet time to nap. Jane finally woke up and I nursed her, and then Clara woke up and had time to recover from napping all before Renata got there.
Renata and her dog Mia arrived just as we were putting candles in the cake. Renata had brought another present as well as a mylar balloon that said "Happy Birthday!" Clara was overwhelmed with excitedment to suddenly have a balloon and a dog in the apartment. Jane was also fascinated by Mia.
We sang Happy Birthday but kind of softly and mostly to the cake, as opposed to Clara, so she wouldn't feel put on the spot. (Last year during my birthday I held Clara in my lap while just Erin, Rachel, and Jack sang Happy Birthday, and Clara still cried. Too much pressure, I guess.) Clara didn't understand blowing out the candles so I did it for her. Then she asked to do it again...and again watched as I did it for her, haha. But she certainly understood getting to eat cake and was happy to do it. So was Jane.
Clara still doesn't really get presents. She knows what they're called but she hasn't made the connection that (1) she is allowed to rip the wrapping paper off and (2) there's usually something pretty fun and exciting inside. She was more interested in playing with each gift after she opened it than in moving onto the next gift, but that's actually kind of nice. We opened about half the gifts and then let her play with them for a while before opening the rest. Beth got her a Minnie Mouse that has snap on dresses and shoes, and Clara was pretty interested in that. She was also happy to stack her new ASL ABC blocks from Jama. Don & Merlene got her a Brio trainset, and Jack set it up on the coffee table. Clara was very into it. But the prize toy, for sure, was the electric trainset Renata brought. Jack set that one oup on the kitchen table (it just fit) and Clara sat and watched it go round for quite a while. At one point I grabbed a few finger puppets from the bath toys and put them in one of the train cars, and Clara gave an excited "Oh ho ho!" Adorable.
Jack went out and bought food to make a green salad and bake some gluten free pizza, and we all had dinner together. It was great visiting with Renata. She has just last week moved back to the bay area to try a new (challenging) job, and she's nervous, but I am really happy to have her closer by again. I hope she manages to visit semi-regularly, that would be great. While we talked Jane and Clara kept wandering after Mia, who wasn't too sure how she felt about all the attention. Once we had Jane in her high seat and Clara eating pizza, though, (which she loved) Mia did better. She's a pretty sweet dog. Pretty quiet.
Suddenly I realized it was 8:30 based on how much Jane was rubbing her eyes. I have to say Jane was great the entire day--never very fussy, just along for the ride. I went and nursed her down and she passed out in our bed. Renata and Mia headed out, Mom changed Clara into pajamas, and we all hung out a bit longer and visited and cleaned up somewhat. When I went to put Clara to bed she gave me a very long hug, and I rocked her back and forth and thought about how I can't believe it's already been three years since she was born, and how it will be a blink of an eye before she's 13 and then 23. It's bittersweet to think of, but it was wonderful to realize for now she's still my little toddler that I can hold in my arms and cuddle. I love her so much.
So yeah, it was a pretty great birthday.
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