A Dinner Party and a Birthday Party

Before I get to a brief (I promise!) description of Maya and Jonah's last day at school, I have a follow-up observation to raise regarding our jungle trip. Mosquitoes did not seem to be a problem to us when we were there. Oh sure, we saw some, especially on the jungle walk. But they were not the pesky varmints I am familiar with from Virginia. In fact, we thought we'd come through the jungle mostly unscathed.

But whoa-nellly. Apparently, bites from a jungle mosquito, due to some freak Darwinian evolutionary twist, only become itchy and obnoxious days after the fact. We (Rebecca and I) are now discovering bites where we didn't believe we had any. And even in places where we were mostly covered by clothes. My ass looks like a dozen mosquitoes ran a track meet on it.

See, the city mosquito can afford to have its bite itch immediately because as soon as you shoe it away, some other sucker comes along to take your place. With the abundance of ample flesh, the city mosquito has become lazy. It's forgotten where it came from.

But since jungle mosquitoes don't see a lot of people, they have to be alert and stealthy enough to chew on the few that they do see as much as possible without being discovered and squashed. So, they have developed a magic bite that doesn't appear or itch until a day or two after they've hosted a dinner party on your back.

And man, when they itch, they itch. But, the amazing thing, the thing that makes me feel one with nature, is recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the mosquito and the piranha. I couldn't jump in the Cuyabeno River now. With all my bleeding mosquito bites, the piranhas would rip me to shreds.

So, the Monday before we left for the jungle (that's a week ago today) Maya and Jonah hosted a party for their last day of school. Since Jonah knows that his birthday is coming up (August 22), he somehow got it into his head that the "going away" party at the school was his birthday party. Since it was so cute to see him excited about it, we played along.

On the Saturday before the party, he and I went to pick out a pinata. He's been really into playing with toy cars lately, and I thought he might pick out a car. But he stayed true to his first love - he picked a ball.

Then, we got some gumballs, candy bars, and individual serving size bags of peanuts to put inside the thing. We had a fun time stuffing it when we got home.



And of course, the kids had a fun time when it was busted open and the candy spilled out.



We also ate some ice cream sandwiches. Jonah didn't seem to care that we didn't sing happy birthday and that he didn't get any presents.