"I Two"

At the start of April (has it really been that long already?) Austin turned 2.  The night before his birthday Cal and I put up some decorations.  I made some cheap felt garlands, we blew up and hung up balloons, and we hung tons of paper airplanes we made out of an old atlas we had.  Austin wanted an airplane birthday.

I think it is so fun to decorate for their birthdays.  Something special just for them.  Austin was so excited about the airplanes.  He told everyone, "My airplanes!  Mommy made for me!"

Austin made lion soup, of course, while I made him his favorite breakfast:  whole wheat apple blueberry pancakes.

Snuggles, too.

And, maybe some airplane swatting...

He was a little shocked when one fell down.

But that didn't deter them from more swatting.  And laughing.

I took the boys to the zoo that morning and the weather was perfect and we had a wonderful time.  There was an old grizzly where the polar bears usually are (apparently she is in there during the day sometimes).  She came right up to the window and was nose to nose with the boys.  They thought it was so cool.

An attempted picture of me with the boys when we had our picnic there.

That evening Zach had swim lessons and we didn't have much time for birthday celebrations.  So we planned a little party for the next night and had ice cream and presents as a family.

The loot.

Austin LOVES ice cream.

He wasn't sure how to blow out the candles and made some funny faces.

He got lots of fun new things and had fun opening presents.

We worked on the cake later that night, but our cake making was disastrous this time.  It took 3 tries to get one to work.  The cake itself was fine, but the frosting failed miserably.  I had this grand scheme of having blue frosting and paper airplanes suspended over it and marshmallows for clouds...  I ended up resorting to my usual chocolate frosting recipe which worked like a charm and went for a "cloud" of 2.  Who knows what the problem with the first 2 was...

We had some friends and family over the next night for pizza and lots of food.  It was low key and so fun.  I was a little worried Austin would be overwhelmed by the crowd (as he often is), but he loved it and seemed to have lots of fun.  He was thrilled to be sung to by so many people.

More funny faces!  He would really scrunch his eyebrows.

Immediately when the flame was out, the candles were popped into his mouth to lick off the frosting.

He now tells everyone, "I two!  I two years old!"

Adorable.

We are grateful to have our sweet funny Austin in our family!