Happy Birthday Christopher

Birthdays can be rough. I almost felt sorry for the kid, like we were inflicting this on him. He's only two, but we wanted to do something fun and special for him. There's no extended family around, so we were totally going for low-key, but fun and special anyway even if it was just the six of us. First we took him swimming. He likes the tub, so I thought he'd love the pool. I've never seen a kid dislike it more. I guess he could have screamed and thrown a massive temper tantrum, and he might have if we'd gone farther in than the two or three inches. We went to a pool that has one of those gradual entry areas. Like a beach. He freaked out at first, then just stood there and closed his eyes. Kinda like he was going to his "happy place" or something. I'm not sure if he was thinking to himself, "If I can't see it, it's not really there" or what, but he stood stock still, with his eyes closed for like five minutes. Then I made him sit on my lap in a couple inches of water, thinking he would acclimate. He didn't. Some lady gave us a weird look cause there he was, totally still, sitting up, eyes closed. I finally gave up and we went and sat on the lounge chairs. I tell you what, that kid can sit still when he wants to. I wish he would choose to at church. I dragged the other disappointed kids out of there after an hour.

Since we had no idea what to get the kid for his birthday, and we have grandparents who would have been insulted if we just took the money they sent, (since we were of no help when the called and asked what they could get him) and stuck it in his college account, and he didn't really get the concept of birthday presents, we thought we'd just take him to Toys R Us and let him pick out something. He fell asleep in the car, so was totally non compliant when we finally got him to wake up. He ended up getting clothes, books, a dump truck, a fire truck, and a train. We really couldn't get him jazzed about much. Other than the clothes, he didn't need the stuff, but it felt like we were breaking some kind of rule if we didn't get him a toy or two for his birthday.

I thought about making him a Blues Clues cake for his birthday. I bought one of those pans, and made and decorated Zach a cake for his second birthday. But, I'm not that great at decorating cakes, my kids think I'm fabulous, it takes me quite awhile, but one of these days I will actually get around to taking a class on cake decorating. So we just ordered a cake from Target. I think I'll just let the pictures tell the story. (okay, maybe with just a little commentary here and there)-

here he sees his cake for the first time!

At this point we're singing to him, and I'm not sure whether he's upset because a)he messed up the picture of blue, b)got frosting all over himself, c)we're singing to him or d)all of the above.The good news is, he doesn't have to suffer through another one for another 364 more days.