He had a birthday, shout hooray!

I knew his 2nd birthday was coming but boy did him turning two take me by surprise. I mean ... I have a TWO-YEAR-OLD. That is just a little too hard for my brain to comprehend.

I was just telling a friend how easy it is for me to ignore that E is growing up because he tends to be smaller than a lot of the kids younger than him so I can just pretend he's the same age as the 14 month old who is his same height. But this birthday sort of confirmed reality. He's TWO!

Obviously he doesn't understand the purpose of his birthday but he definitely knew that it was a day to celebrate him. He had a huge grin on his face almost all day long (except when I pointed a camera in his direction. He gets that from his dad).

E was welcomed by streamers and a balloon pit. He was a huge fan of both. 

We managed to tear him away from his fun for some breakfast "cake", aka a giant cinnamon roll.

His grin could not have been any bigger as we sung him the birthday song and he blew out his candles. In fact, he blew them out so fast I didn't even have a chance to snap a picture!

So we re-lit the candles and tried again. It turns out the harder he tries to blow out candles the worse he gets at it but it gives me lots more time for picture taking!

Once breakfast was devoured we jumped in the car and headed down to the zoo. 

One of his favorite things was running back and forth through the bamboo. 

We spent the rest of the morning animal watching. 

E's other favorite zoo feature: the tractor.

Barking out orders while he drives his tractor through the fields.

After the zoo we came home and put E down for a nap but he was a little too excited to sleep so Ben and I dozed in and out of consciousness while E giggled and laughed and told himself stories ... for almost two hours. 

When I went in to get him from his nap he was just sitting in his crib with a huge smile on his face. I think he definitely knew today was a day just for him. 

Now that Ben and I were rested up, we stuck E in the balloon pit and got to work on his cake.

Balloons never get old. I'm gad I have creative friends with brilliant and cheap ideas like this one because I think it made E's day.

I was going to take progress pictures of E's cake as it was slowly constructed but there was a point when I almost smashed the whole thing because I was so frustrated. Luckily, we had friends coming over later to help us celebrate and they were expecting cake so I kept at it.

Before long, and with Ben's help, we finally had a cake. 

Not only did we have a cake but it was just as good as I was hoping it'd be.

My camera was being a little funky with the lighting so the cake isn't orange but that picture above is my favorite because it shows all the little details: the tire treads, the notches in the fence post, the engine parts, the manure around the tractor wheels. Mmm.

This is more of the color the cake actually was:

Ben was in charge of those tire treads. Pretty awesome, right? I think that was my favorite part. And I'm glad I didn't end up smashing it and saying cakes were outlawed for birthdays. 

Cake = Happy family = happy life.

The only thing to do now that the candles on the cake were blown out was open presents! 

He warily approached the large beast and then proceeded to push it over.

It was definitely a good day and we had so much fun. My goal was to have E feel like it was a special day and I think we did just that.