Ivy's Birthday Celebration

Today I'm sharing a little recap of Ivy's birthday celebration! Photo dump ahead.

Since it fell during the week, we had initially planned to celebrate on the weekend. But then my parents postponed their visit and Mandy suddenly had the day off from work due to exposure and I took a vacation day. Kip's class had a planned field trip to the zoo which for a number of reasons we decided to have him not attend. Instead he got a free "house day" to stay home and help celebrate Ivy's birthday. He was thrilled about this idea. 

We don't do friend parties yet so it was our tradition of decorations, big balloons, and gifts with just family. This balloon garland was a beast to assemble and barely held together but it looks good in photos.

In the morning we called family to Zoom opening presents together. Ivy was really into it this year getting super excited about gifts and willingly letting Kip help we open presents. She was so spoiled by the generosity of grandparents and aunts and uncles.

Dan and I had bought a large dollhouse for her for Christmas but actually didn't give it to her because she got so much other stuff at Christmas. It ended up being a great idea to wait because age 2 was perfect for this doll house. She took to it right away playing with her CocoMelon figures. It helped too that she had been using a much smaller dollhouse previously so she knew how to play with it.

We also got her some small activity books with stickers and markers.

She got a scooter from Grandma! Cash register, car for the doll house, and outdoor sprinkler toy from Marmee and Poppa (and stomp rockets she opened early). Mandy got her an adorable ice cream cart, new play tent for her room, and some fun cat accessories like a cat and purse. Aunt Judy, Aunt Kandi, Uncle Willy, and cousins got her a huge Duplo Lego house, cardboard blocks (big upgrade from the old shoe boxes we were using), summer inner-tubes, and huge cat body pillow. Uncle Joey (Dan's boss) got her a cute pink princess little train. Kip gifted her some more Cocomelon figures to add to the dollhouse and a massive stack of pictures and crafts he made her over the months leading up to her birthday. Kip was so sweet with Ivy the whole day doing his best to make her feel special and didn't meltdown over jealousy. 

Ivy honestly loved everything and had the best time digging into the gifts and engaging with family on the computer.

After gifts she took a nap and then after lunch we all headed to the Staten Island Zoo. We had not been back to this zoo since 2019 pre-pandemic. It's a smaller zoo and much to our delight, it was practically empty. We did the petting zoo part for the first time, got dip-in-dots, walked through the exhibits, had popcorn, did the photo booth and left with some more stuffed animals. The only bummer was the carousel was closed but otherwise we had a great time and it was a little something special for her day.

When we got home we Facetimed with Auntie Jess and Ivy opened her box full of fun dress-up accessories (sorry no pictures of this as I was using my phone for the call and I forgot about photos in Facetime. Ugh!). 

After bath and dinner we did cake!! 

It was a full and fun-filled day that we all enjoyed.