Taking the Scenic Route

Robert’s oldest turned 9 and they had a birthday party at a park near their place.  It was fun, with the exception of one kid who was sort of a bully.  Zane enjoyed himself a lot and participated as much as he could.  Zora, who is very much in the stranger anxiety stage, clung to me for quite a while.  It was sort of amusing to me to see Zane run off to play and Zora stuck to me.  Seemed backwards.  lol.

The group is typically really loud and rowdy, and today was no exception.  (plus, it is a group of 7-10yo boys and one girl, except for my two and the birthday boy’s little sister).  Since Zane isn’t into games like “push the other kid off the playground equipment”, he mostly just gave them wide berth on the playground and had a lot of fun hanging with dad instead. 

He did want to hit the pinata and was mildly upset when the second kid up there broke it (as were a number of other kids).  Once the candy was gathered (which Zane did participate in, despite the pushing) I suggested we put the pinata back up and let the kids take turns hitting it some more.  After a chorus of “yes” from the kids upon hearing the idea, the pinata was strung back up and a bunch of other kids had fun pounding it to confetti.  The kid that had been making rather mean comments to Zane all afternoon tried to grab the stick out of Zane’s hand and I made it clear that it was Zane’s turn and he would get a chance in a minute.  I was getting a little tired of this kid frankly.  Zane had a ball batting at the pinata (apparently, the kid I made wait for his turn whined the whole time, to nobody in particular, about “why does he even get a turn, he isn’t even hitting it hard” and such.)  He is lucky I didn’t hear him after the mean comments he made about Zane not getting the sticker in the ‘right’ place on “stick the squid on the spongebob” (pin the tail on the donkey with stickers and cartoon character). 

Zane sat with his bag of candy and watched the presents being opened, even going up to somebody to verbally ask for help opening one of his pieces of candy he couldn’t get open.  Unfortunately, the person he picked was Robert’s sister, who is severely delayed and she either didn’t understand what he wanted, or just didn’t feel like helping.  Dori caught what was going on and called him over and helped him open his candy.  It figures, he finally asks for help from a stranger and he happens to choose somebody who looks like an adult, but has her own set of issues so she was unable to respond well.  Before Dori called him over he was really confused as to why this person was not helping him and was actually trying to repair the breakdown in communication by asking in different ways.  I hope it doesn’t prevent him from asking for help in the future because it was really a good thing to see.

Some pictures from the gathering.

and within ten minutes of returning home….