Henry's Birthday

Fiona attended her first big invite-the-whole-preschool-class birthday party over the weekend, although since the party was held in Brooklyn and you needed to drive only about 5 kids from the preschool were able to attend (the place was still packed, since the family also invited various friends, and every kid had 1-2 parents chaperoning).

Classic New York moment: the first big birthday party my daughter attended was held in a bar. In Greenpoint, for those who know NYC. The birthday boy's dad owns the place, and I guess he decided to keep the hipsters, drunks, and hipster drunks out until 4pm or so for the day (although anybody could have wandered in, I doubt they would have wanted to stick around once they saw the scene, unless they were really overdoing it on the ironic hipster act).

And from the preschoolers-can-get-away-with-this-kind-of-stuff file, my favorite moments from the party:

• A friend of the family who must be a dog trainer brought in 4-5 dogs to do some tricks for the kids and then invited all the children up to pet the dogs. Fiona ran to the stage with everybody else (as I've noted before, you can suddenly tell how tall she is when you see her towering over all the other children at the party; part of that is because she'll be four next month and the birthday boy was just turning three this weekend).
  
  One of the boys from her class, David, suddenly noticed at that very moment that Fiona was at the party. And so he started shouting "Fiona's here! Hi Fiona! Everybody, Fiona's here!" at the top of his lungs, making it impossible for the dog trainer to say much of anything. Except wait for Fiona to eventually notice that somebody was shouting her name at the top of his lungs (she was happy to see David once she stopped paying attention to the dogs).
  
  
• At birthday cake time, everybody (naturally) wanted to sit next to the birthday boy. Once we got Fiona her cake and headed over to the table with the kids, Henry (the birthday boy) was already sitting on a bench next to another boy from class, Jules. So Fiona crawled underneath the table and forced herself between Henry and Jules. Neither of whom seemed to mind, or even notice.
  
  
• I think the parents wanted Henry to open his presents after the party, which I'm sure was fine with the various adult friends in attendance, but not so kosher with the preschool crowd. Before we left, Fiona picked her present out of the pile and brought it to Henry (she wasn't the first kid to do this, nor was she the last). Eventually, his parents decided to let Henry open the presents that were brought to him. But as he pulled at the bow and had trouble opening the gift, Fiona leaned over and told him what was in the present. Again, he didn't seem to mind.

Now I guess we have to find a good local dive to have a bash in for Fiona's fourth...