I am 2!

It was Ryan's 2nd birthday just over a month ago and here are the photos!! Yahoo!! I was trying to teach him to say - "I am 2" because I knew a common question was going to be, "How old are you?" It was a common questions and Ryan would answer it with some coaching.

Here is the final outcome of my efforts to make a birthday cake for Ryan. I had been given the mold for the pieces of the train (that's actually 10 pieces put together to make the train) at Christmas, and thought "Why not? It looks easy enough!"

Wow, was this ever harder than it looks! It took the entire box of cupcake mix to get enough pieces that came out well enough to use - that was 3 attempts on some of the pieces!

The decorating was a bit more fun but still took quite a bit more time than I had anticipated - my hat goes off to people who decorate cakes, it's not so easy!!

Just to be clear, I am aware that this was Ryan's 2nd birthday - the number 1 on the train isn't for his age, it's because the train is supposed to be Thomas (I'm sure some of you got that but Chris didn't at first so I thought I'd share).

Ryan's birthday started with us having a number of moms and tots from church over (to my landlady's house since our apt is too small to hold that many). I hadn't told anyone it was Ryan's b-day so it wasn't really a party, just a great excuse to gather some people together. We did a bit of finger painting to get hand/foot prints of our children, it was fun! (Aside: I did this when Ryan turned 1 and his hand size has hardly changed since then but his foot size has more than doubled!)

In the evening it was just the 3 of us. We had Ryan's favourite meal: fajitas followed by the cake and presents. Here, Ryan is on the phone with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Ilse who called to wish him happy birthday. The phone was a little gooey when we got it back from him!

Ryan certainly learned about presents at Christmas and he now loves them. He will get very wide-eyed and say "Ooooh, present! Open it?" The first one he opened was a new VeggieTales movie - he loves "Bob and Lawwy (Larry)".

I don't remember what he was opening here but I love the expression on his face - he was like this for all the presents - everything was cool and exciting - at least for a few seconds!!

It took some doing, but we managed to save the one from us to the end. Ryan kept wanting to go for it - probably because it was the biggest box - but I kept putting others into his hands first. (Good thing there weren't actually that many to open all at once - like at Christmas, the presents were spread out over a few days depending on when he saw people!)

Here he is opening the Little People Airport we gave him. He LOVES the Little People stuff - in particular the people themselves. We have 3 sets now and a total of 7 people - often these people have to come to the table at lunch where they are allowed to sit and watch but not be close enough that he can play with them and get them covered in food!

Chris is putting the final touches on getting the airport put together and Ryan has already started to play! It came with a taxi, airplane and helicopter - we spend a lot of time zooming through the sky these days!
I can't believe it's already been 2 years, wow! Ryan is such a joy to watch and makes us laugh. His personality is great - when he's comfortable he owns the place and will run anywhere and everywhere. If he's not so sure then he'll stick close to Mummy and Daddy and pretend to be shy. His vocabulary grows everyday and he recognizes things that we didn't even know he knew! When we drive by the street that Nana and Grandpa live on he'll say "Nana's house?", he can recognize some letters and numbers and will oint them out on signs around the grocery store and he loves the colour orange - it's the one he gets right most frequently. This next year is going to be another adventure and we can't wait to see how he continue to grow and develop!