Birthday Celebrations for the 2 Year Old

We had a great time celebrating Zach's birthday this year. He seemed a little confused by the whole birthday idea but loved all the attention. Every time we sang him the birthday song he'd get an excited look on his face and then ask us to sing it again. We blew up some balloons and put up a sign for him. Zach loved it when we'd blow up a balloon for him then give it to him to let it fly around the room. Maybe we'll save money on presents and just give him empty balloons next year. It was also fun to see him keep looking up at the sign throughout the day and get a big smile on his face. Simple pleasures right?

We had a small family party for Zach this year since we don't know very many people around here yet. Jamon and Jean (Derrick's brother and sister-in-law) came over for the celebrations. We had a dance party, opened presents, and had monkey cake. Zach loved all the presents and people were very generous. Some of his presents include: a bull dozer, a bouncing horse, an alphabet zoo with a different animal for every letter, a puzzle, a magna doodle, and some new dinosaurs. Zach kept letting out these great shrieks of delight with each gift and was a pro at unwrapping things.

For the cake I used a wheat-free chocolate cake mix and just had to substitute out the eggs. It turned out pretty tasty, just a little denser than normal cake. Zach liked the cake so much he even ignored his ice cream - something which is unheard of for Zach. Since Zach's our little monkey boy and his favorite animal of the moment is a monkey, we decided to add some monkey-ness to the birthday.

The monkey cake. I didn't feel brave enough to try fondant so I used cream cheese frosting instead.

A new monkey shirt I designed and appliquéd for him. I got really sick and went to the hospital for a few hours the weekend before Zach's birthday so this didn't get finished until a few days later.

Zach is at such a fun age and we love having him in our family. Here are a few of his quirks that I want to remember:

- Zach is finally starting to show some interested in learning to say new words but still speaks in animal noises about half the time.

- Zach's most frequent request is for "more juice".

- For some reason he loves running in circles on the area rug in our front room and laughing like crazy. He even loves doing this nakey after bath time until we pin him down to get him dressed.

- Zach loves watching movies of himself on our computer. He calls them Zach movies.

- Zach loves to color with crayons. He's always pulling out his crayons and notebook and asking us to draw specific animals for him to color on. Lately he feels the need to add a hat and glasses to each one.

- Zach's pretty diligent about taking any trash he finds and throwing it away. Too bad he can't seem to remember which cupboard holds the trash can so he'll sometimes put trash in a pan or let it just drop to the floor in a random cupboard.

- When he gets excited he'll let out these bursts of laughter

- In the morning or after a nap I get greeted by streams of "ma ma ma ma da da da da"

- Zach's started "helping" us put our shoes on when he wants us to hurry up. He'll even try to pick up a foot and guide the flip flop on.

- We have to keep the front door locked because the only door he knows how to open is that one.

- Zach is obsessed with swinging. This is quite the contrast from being scared of them last summer.

- Zach has finally started to give kisses. He'll put his mouth up to whatever he's giving a kiss to and say "mwah!" We're still waiting for him to get the actual kissing action down but gotta love the sound effect.