Happy Birthday!

Andrew turned 2 today. TWO!!! I can see now why mothers say, "It was just yesterday you were my baby". I am TOTALLY going to be one of those mothers. I just can't believe that this little boy is mine. Someday I'm going to find out what I did to deserve such a neat kid.

We celebrated his birthday yesterday because today Daddy, Grandpa, and Pepere had a Bengals game to attend. You have to have priorities, people. And I figured that if anyone would approve of moving a party for a football game, it would be Andrew :) They just had to promise to bring him to a game in the future.

It was really fun to watch him at the "party". I put this in quotations because when you think of a "party", you think of inviting some different people over, usually your own age, and celebrating with games and food. Andrew's "party" consisted of Andrew playing and 6 people watching him adoringly...which is kind of like his life in general.

We drove down from Jeff's parents just in time for Andrew to take a nap at my parents' house. He is sick...of course...so before the party we had to pin him down to put eyedrops in and wipe his nose a million times. This is while he is SCREAMING, because he woke up in such a bad mood. PAR-TAY!!!! Seeing the mountain that was his pile of presents seemed to perk him up, however. Especially when everyone started encouraging him to open them.

You have to understand. Last weekend we went to our neighbor's b-day party. Andrew watched in fascination as Tyler opened his gifts. Andrew was enthralled with the cards that Tyler got and insisted on being read each and every card multiple times. So I made sure he had some cards to open up with his presents. Apparently, when you get to open the actual boxes...cards aren't nearly so interesting. :) He barely glanced at them!

Back to opening gifts. So Andrew opens his first present...and he wants to play with it. Right now. Forget the 6,000 other gifts on the table. That looks COOL, so let's play with it. Mommy convinces him to save it for later. We got through about 4 gifts and then Andrew had a MELTDOWN. HE WANTED TO PLAY WITH HIS PRESENTS. So we took a break. Andrew opened his paint pens and big pad of paper and painted a birthday mural. It's a good thing there were no other kids there...they wouldn't have stood this open-in-phases birthday party. After the mural, we convinced him to go back and open more presents. We literally had him crying because we kept making him open more gifts. The kid is 2. He doesn't need 20 presents. But it is SO FUN TO SHOP FOR A 2 YEAR OLD. So he put up with us. And I have enough new activites to keep him busy until mid-January.

Then it was time for cake. Unlike so many good mothers out there, I got a store-bought cake. I just couldn't find it in myself to bake over Thanksgiving weekend, at someone else's house. So my poor kid got a store-bought cake. It was beautiful. It was DELICIOUS. We all enjoyed it tremendously. Andrew blew out his own candles, and ate with such a relish. So different from last year. In a year, he has learned what cake is!!! Of course, he still almost cried when we all sang the birthday song. He doesn't like group singing!!!

We kept saying "Happy birthday" and he would respond, "Happy birthday to you, Grandma" or whoever said it to him. So darn cute.

What a nice birthday party. He woke up at the butt-crack of dawn on his birthday. I understand...make it last as long as possible. Actually, my little sister came knocking on my door to let me know he was stirring. His crib bumps up against her wall. So even though at home I would have let him stir for another hour or so, I took pity on my college-age sister, and got him up at 6 am. She has many years before she should have to sleep through that! He was in a great mood, and just played all morning with his new toys. We went to the museam center in Cinci, which is way too advanced for him, and sat in traffic on the way back to my mom's house. We then drove all the way back to Louisville, with Andrew only crying the last 30 minutes of the trip (the kid just WON'T sleep in a car...past his bedtime...in the dark...soothing music playing...and he can't relax!)

Two years ago I was staring at my tiny miracle mewing in my arms (okay, he wasn't so tiny). Tonight, I hugged my bigger miracle close to me and thanked every star in the sky that I've been blessed with this little boy. No one could ask for more in life that to get to call him mine. And he hugged me back and said "Love you too, mommy". How much better can this get?