2!!

Elijah is 2!!

A big kid. He used to be a baby. Now, I look at pictures of him and do a double-take: is that really my kid? That's a big boy in the picture!  That's not a baby!  Yep.

Somehow, in the last year, he developed a sense of humor, a naughty side, a prankster attitude, the sweetest hugs and kisses, an eyelash bat that stops waitresses in their tracks and gets him great service at any restaurant, and the requisite strong will that comes standard in our family package.  With the strong will it seems negotiating skills came included, which is handy. :)We are overwhelmed by his cuteness and coolness and sweetness.

He had a great day being two. His party was at our MyGym (on the way to which, in the car, he hummed 'Happy Byouthday to E-ya-ya' in the sweetest voice possible, all while holding his birthday balloon). He got to have bubbles, a zip line ride, a ride-on toy, ball pit and a puppet show for his party. Not to mention all the friends!

And, of course, there was CAKE! We ordered a Bob the Builder one from Liz's Bakery next door, and boy did they do an amazing job.  The cake was so tasty! It had fruit in the middle (hey, no one can get mad at me for serving children fruit, right?) and not too much frosting, and the tastiest yellow cake layers.  But best of all is the cake design! Wombat was very excited about it.  He liked the taste of the cake as much as the toys on it. :)



We've been practicing blowing out candles with Wombat for weeks, and he's been doing it with no problem! Until, of course, he was put on the spot in front of everyone.




"Daddy do dat".  So Daddy helped blow out the candles.





There are more birthday pictures on Fotki, if you know the password.  If you don't, email me to ask. :)

We tried to ask for no gifts, and tried instead to do a used-book exchange. Of course, only our close friends believed us and everyone else interpreted this as "please bring a brand-new book for my child, wrapped." Oh well. May be I'll try again next year. :) Elijah definitely loves all his new books though! Lucky boy.

We just didn't want everyone to bring a trinket, given how our house already looks like a storage facility for FAO Schwartz.  But of course, we bought him gifts ourselves.  And, with a little help from our family, we got him two BIG THINGS. 

And, after the party, he was so excited that he refused to take a nap.  It's like he knew that there were gifts waiting for him downstairs.  So, napless and sugar-high, we unwrapped the BIG THING NUMBER ONE.

A BIG, VERY LARGE, ENORMOUS TRUCK.

We saw Bruder trucks in our local toy shop.  Wombat tried to take every one of them out of their boxes and went wild over them.  I went on Amazon to see if I could procure one, of course.

And I found a truck that was half-off! The reviewers for it said "it was larger than I thought...." and "my kid loves it!!". I figured, oh, it's as large as the ones in the toy store, that's not too bad. I ordered it.  It arrived.

It's very large.

It's larger than the ones in the toy store. It's larger than Wombat. I'm pretty sure. But he can't ride it.

Mostly because there is already an excavator riding it.

No, seriously.

Here it is.



The smaller truck is in the foreground.  The large truck is in the back, and I didn't want to switch to a wide-angle lens to get it.  And I'm only half-kidding about the wide-angle.

Iggy wrapped it, and it was the largest box and the first box Wombat reached for. And after the paper was torn off, Wombat lost track of space and time for a little while and got to know his new truck. The first thing he did after the truck was out of the box is say "baby rul'!" and "baby digger!" and got 2 Little People figures to drive the equipment. Smart.



Wombat is sitting ON THE TRUCK.  He is sitting where the excavator (foreground) would normally sit.  Check out how his bum only takes up like 1/3 of the available trailer space.  Here he is adjusting his digger-holding spacers on the platform trailer.  Truck maintainance is complicated business.


After hours of playing with it, Wombat decided to take a lyrical pause and asked for his la-la-la and a song to play along to.  So, instead of bringing out the Wii plastic guitar, we opened the BIG THING NUMBER TWO.

A REAL GUITAR.

Wombat has been music-obsessed for months now. He's been sitting on the couch, listening to Russian cartoon songs and strumming the Wii guitar. For his birthday, we decided to get him the real thing.



He loved it. The new "la - la - la" is awesome.

There is only one problem: it has steel strings. They make a much nicer sound than vinyl, and the guitar comes with a pick for them, but Wombat wants to strum with his hand. He already tore up his thumb using it, and he still won't use the pick. So we are sort of hiding it until we figure out a way to get him to pick at the strings.

And then, of course, there are all the books, there are the toy trains, there are many other gifts that he got and is still going through.  Thank you all so much for such outpouring of love for our little guy.  He feels proud to be two; we feel amazed that two years have already passed.  Time does fly when you are having fun.

Happy Birthday to the best Wombat in the whole wide world.  If we could find words to tell you how much we love you, they would make the most beautiful song ever sung.



Yeay 2!