A (Birth)Day at the Aquarium

So I decided that having your child's birthday right after Christmas is almost as annoying as having your own birthday right after Christmas. It's hard to even think about planning birthday parties in the middle of the holidays. And then in the aftermath, you don't want to think about it either. Let alone the idea of birthday party gifts! Yikes, following new Christmas presents? It's just too much. This all to say that we kept things simple again this year. And since first and second birthday parties are (for the most part) totally lost on the honorees, we (again) made Elliott's birthday celebration a small family affair. Only this year it was a destination party at the Birch Aquarium!

Elliott loves to look at fish and fish tanks, (heck, remember the Free Zoo?) so we thought this was a great option. It was so much fun to see him with all the big tanks. He must have said "wow" and "wow, weird" I don't know how many times.

And sometimes, he was just content to take it all in.

They have a nice tide pool exhibit outside as well, even though Elliott was a bit small to really see what was going on in there.

We also discovered he was NOT a fan of the rubber lobster. He got behind grandma as fast as he could and just stayed like that until he was sure it wasn't alive...and even then he didn't want anything to do with it! Ha!

He was particularly concerned that some of the star fish were not in the water with the rest of the star fish and tried to rescue a couple of them. Fortunately, we managed to keep all the rubber star fish out of the tide pools!

They also had a great water exhibit outside. There were two tables with water that flowed from one side to the other. You could make adjustments to the current with the yellow and blue plates and then see the effect it had on boats you sent down stream. Needless to say, Elliott had a good time sending the boats on there way and even making adjustments to the stream (or at least trying to ;) He got some good assistance from grandpa and uncle Robert!

Here's a little video of how it worked:

All in all a great day!