Jurassic Birthday: A Limited Dinosaur Experience

The virtual dinosaur experience was good, but we still wanted Troy to be able to celebrate with his friends. But being still worried about the coronavirus, we decided to limit it to a closed group of just the kids from his daycare. He spends all day every day with them anyway, so it seemed safe to let them play together. We decided to have the second party in the afternoon after all the kids had woken up from their naps. It’s convenient that they all are on the same schedule at daycare!

We had a pretty good turnout, four kids came by, so about a third of the class. It was nice to finally meet some of the other parents in the class too. Everyone did great abiding by our rules to wear masks and keep a safe distance from each other. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun. They loved all of the dinosaur stuff as much as Troy did! I was concerned that we were going to give them nightmares with the T-Rex decal, but nobody even flinched at it.

There were two downsides to the party. The first was when we tried to blow up the bouncy castle. All of the kids started crying and running to their parents. So, we packed it away. There was no shortage of fun with the other stuff, so not a huge deal.

The other thing was watching my son interact with other kids. He’s not a sharing kind of kid apparently. He was very possessive of everything, ripping toys out of kids hands and even shoving a few to the floor if they tried to take it back. More than once, my wife and I had to take him aside and talk to him about it. Luckily, nobody got hurt, and it didn’t seem to bother any of the other parents. But it bothers me. I don’t want my kid to be a bully, so we’re going to have to nip this in the bud.

The Greek food my wife ordered and the dinosaur-themed cake that she put together were fantastic! The party lasted several hours until the kids started to get tired, and the parents started packing them up to get them home for their nighttime wind-down routine. We’re happy that Troy wasn’t stuck with us for the majority of the day and that he got to have some friends over.