Birthday Visitors

As noted in the previous entry, Michael's birthday celebration included a visit from his Gramma and Papa Rauer and his Uncle Tim! Their trip out here was delayed by a day due to the winter weather that shut down the Detroit airport. Once they arrived though, Michael was thrilled to see them, and all the extra attention left him feeling super, as expressed by the shirt he received from Uncle Tim. (The birthday gift came with a Batman shirt also!)

This picture pretty much sums up how Michael felt about his birthday visit from Gramma, Papa and Tim.

Adventures during the visit included numerous ferry rides, of which Michael never tires, especially when they involve snacking on a Mum-Mum (seen in the foreground).

We think Mum-Mum was Michael's first word. At first we thought he was saying "Mama," but as he spoke he would reach toward the cabinet. I'm just glad he likes the taste of rice crackers, because if he's got Celiac like his dad, he's going to be eating a good many rice crackers over the years.

Michael's favorite activities on the ferry include: (1) staring at other passengers; (2) continuing to stare at other passengers; (3) having his diaper changed in the ferry bathroom (women's bathroom, that is; too bad for me there's no changing station in the men's room...or is there?); (4) eating Mum-Mums (see above); (5) staring out the window for birds, airplanes, boats, birds, driftwood, etc. Here is a picture of Activity #5 with help from Uncle Tim.

One adventure was a visit to the Seattle Aquarium, which houses all sorts of sea creatures that live in the sound. The main attraction is the octopus, which you can see in this picture I pulled from the Internet. Similar to a Hypercolor shirt, the octopus changes color according to its activity level: active = red; inactive = gray. As you can see, he's quite active in the picture (and so was the girl apparently).

Michael missed the all-red memo and showed only moderate activity with his orange sleeves. He did love the fish and enjoyed facing up to the glass for a closer look.

Another afternoon was spent at Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island. I've blogged about this park before, but as Michael gets older, there's more and more fun to be had there. For example, green rocks:

The slide:
And the gravel!

One of our final excursions was to visit the Science Center where the Harry Potter exhibit was wrapping up. Without mentioning any names, two of us have read the books multiple times and were very eager for the exhibit:

I thought it was a great show, too, and I've only read the first four of the books. There were superfans aplenty at the show, relishing the formal wear that Harry, Ron and Hermione wore to the Yule Ball at the Triwizard Tournament! Michael stayed interested as long as he could, taking breaks occasionally with me and his Papa.
But ultimately the Harry Potter exhibit cast a pretty serious sleeping spell on him.