iohelix

I guess since we put the pics up, I should do a text update to go with all of the pictures.

Skye’s birthday was fairly mellow for obvious reasons.  I still woke up giddy though on the day of her birthday, even though we didn’t have anything special planned that day.  I guess I was excited for her and also to reach this significant milestone.  I was reflective most of the day about this last year and how amazing it’s all been and how extremely lucky and grateful I still am for her.  Being her mama has exceeded my expectations and it just keeps getting better and better.  I would really love for her to have a sibling, but that challenge still goes unmet and undecided.

It was strange that for Skye it was just another day, like any other for her.  We went to Leso park after lunch and I think that was her favorite part of her whole birthday; swinging on the swings.  I had picked up as many presents as I could carry on the bus with me.  We got her a few new bath toys, a stuffed animal to go with a collection at home, some toys for her to push around and the like.  We got this little walker for her to push around and it first she seems hesitant to use  it on her own, but now she loves it and has her wide, silly grin whenever she pushes it around, like she is so proud of herself for walking with it on her own and being the one in control.  The Welkers sent a ton of much appreciated books, although Skye loved, and still loves, the musical birthday card the best.  My boss, his wife and daughter also brought over a couple of gifts and the cake in the video.  We had planned to make her one, but then they brought one over and then it seemed useless to have two.  It was pretty pathetic with just the 5 of us, I can’t imagine another birthday cake with just Benjam and I, so that was that.

We went back to Wein for her birthday over the weekend.  I’d heard about Prater Park, an amusement park, and thought that would be fun for her.  We got to the train station thinking we could catch the 950a train.  The station was packed with students, families and tourists going away for the weekend, so we didn’t make our train since we were waiting in line for tickets when it left.  An hour later, and the station was completely deserted.  It was very strange that it would just die like that within an hour, like no one wanted to take the 11a trains.  So we got to Vienna later than I wanted, but turns out it was fine.  The weather was just absolutely gorgeous (and had been since), not  a cloud in sight and it was warm enough not to need a coat but not so hot to sweat buckets either.  After clouds, snow and rain for the last 3 months, soaking up the Austrian sun was worth the trip alone.    You don’t have to pay an admission price like you have to for say, Disneyland, you just pay per ride.  Since we couldn’t ride anything, that saved us a ton on money.  We only went on two rides, and it cost 2 euro for each.  The rides we went on were little trains that went in and out of the building that was decorated.  It was kinda like a way scaled down It’s A Small World ride, way way way scaled down.  Except that we are not familiar with any of the culture, folklore, stories etc of the region so all of the puppets and characters had no meaning for us, and in fact were a little scary.  It was so random.  The place was huge, but kinda run down.  They had a ton of huge rides, roller coasters, bumper cars,  everything you’d find at Lagoon basically.  The one quite blatant difference was that all of the announcers were shouting in German and every single ride had overly-loud,  stompy, aggressive techno music playing.  It wasn’t that crowded so the entire scene was just out of sync.  It only took us a few hours to walk around and see everything.  Skye was quiet the entire time, just taking everything in, overwhelmed with sensory overload.  She carried around this piece of bread the whole time, untouched, because she had so much to look at.  I think she had a good time though, just being out of the house, enjoying the sun and people and kid watching.  On the way out, we  stopped in at the planetarium.  if you even want to call it that, this sentence is in fact, the only thing worth mentioning about it.

Overall, it was a birthday unlike she’ll probably ever have again in the near future.  It was really fun for all of us to experience it for the first time together.  Benjam and I were both a little bummed that we coudln’t really go all out and we missed everyone back home.  I can tell you though that it is a birthday that none of us will ever forgot. Well, except for Skye, since she probably already doesn’t remeber it.