Birthdays That Last A Week, Bikes For 2 Year-Olds, Gymboree Party, and Contributing To Harry Potter’s College Fund

One of the benefits of my daughter being an only child (for now) is that her birthday has turned into a week long celebration. Every morning it's the same greeting "It's MY birthday!" To strangers she announces, "My Birthday!". I still don't think she really knows what that means.
On her actual birthday my wife made birthday cupcakes, had a small party with her weekday friends, and our sitter. And later we took her to one of those places with nothing but bounce-houses. We also gave her a gift - a bike. She’s been asking for one for about a month now because the bigger kids around the neighborhood have them.

Skip The Tricycle And Go For the Well-Design Bike!
The wife and I have had some disagreements about the type of bike we were going to buy her -- she wanted to get her one of those normal tricycles with like Princesses or Dora on it. I on the other hand wanted to get a balance bike, LikeABike, that trains toddlers how to ride a real bike (skip the tricycle phase.) And because of the minimalist design I wanted customize this bike myself with stickers I create. Oh, and did I mention the bike looks cool too?
I did end up buying the LikeABike knock-off at Target (only $50 compared with $270 for the “original” Sorry, LikeABike - the difference is $220… that’s a big deal.)
While putting the bike together, my daughter was jumping all over the place like an excited monkey. That’s until I put it on the ground and put her on it only to find out she’s about 2 inches too short to hold it up (I guess that’ll go in the closet for a few more months…)

A Birthday Party At Gymboree (Without Elvis)
This time last year, I sold my kidney for cash on the black market, recruited 8 extremely creative friends and together we put on a huge 1 year-old party for my daughter that made the ones from Cookie Magazine look like a get-together BBQ with leftovers (I’m never doing that again…) This year, we invited about 90 less people and did a simple, low-key party at Gymboree (Play & Music). It was great! 14 kids under 5 and their parents had a ball playing on the equipment, making music, dancing, singing, face-painting (boys called them “tattoos”), and running around under the parachute – perfect for kids this age.
The only drawback was the entire event was only 2 hours long so we didn’t have time to open presents (we had a no-gift party last year) other than that, success!

Harry Potter Rocked The Casbah
Ever since the job started summer hours on Fridays (out by 1), I feel like a normal person again. The wife and I actually get to see movies once more since our daughter was born. This week it was Harry Potter – which by the way, was great. I know the movie leaves out a lot of the book, but if they made that movie this thing would have been 8 hours long. For what it is, they did an excellent job, especially the effects at the end and professor Umbridge’s office (plates on the walls – nice touch!) The only weird part is seeing how big the kids have grown. Ron is looking more like a 50 year-old alcoholic while the others look like normal teenagers.