it's your birthday it's your day
looks like a party!
Lijah turned two today! We celebrated his birthday with a big brunch bash yesterday morning (and well into the afternoon...). We couldn't get him to really focus on the preparations, so we just invited a few of his closest friends and age peers—who of course brought along their siblings and parents. So it was a pretty good show. I made a lot of pancakes.
pancakes pancakes
This was the first time we've done a kids party with the entertainment planned for inside the house (yay for May and June birthdays!) so I was a little nervous, but in the end it all went wonderfully. Pancakes were perfect, because they keep coming off the griddle and you want folks to eat em up hot, so as guests arrived they could just grab a plate and dig in. Weighed down with up to five pancakes each (that was Taya), the kids were slowed enough that they didn't destroy anything. And then since the weather was fine, they ended up going outside anyway!
knight of the rectangular wagon
I won't always pull Lijah up and down the street in the wagon as many times as he wants, but it was his birthday! All the big kids delighted in the wide range of bikes and scooters we have available, but of course when you have not-quite-two-year-olds at a party, they don't always all feel like doing the same things.
this is where the action is
Eventually we got everybody back inside for cake (and as an aside, it's a good thing the party was fun for Lijah, since it distracted him; before folks arrived he spent a solid two hours asking if he could start eating cake!). In the days before his party he expressed some trepidation about being able to blow out the candle, so he enlisted Harvey to help; as it happened he made a solid attempt at it, and then they did it together in fine form.
one, two...
Then present-opening, which was such a scrum I could barely see what was happening—to say nothing of getting a good picture (the dubious best is featured in the weekly photo post from earlier). But when the crowds cleared—the big kids back outside, the littler ones to their various entertainments—he very much enjoyed exploring each present. Somehow along the way he lost his clothes, but that just means it was a great party!
who needs clothes when you've got presents?!
The card he's holding there is maybe his favorite part of the whole birthday experience: it has a picture of some gangster/barbershop dogs (really! I have no idea), and when you open it it plays music. Shades of Harvey's delight lo these many years ago. I now know the song very well; the first line is the title of this post. How long to those batteries last?
Happy birthday Lijah, and here's to a great year!