Saga of a two year old's birthday

So Saturday our little white-skinned, red-headed man turned two. My baby!!! We had a great day planned - zucchini bread and smoothies for breakfast (Ezra's favorite); opening presents; lunch at the pool.... then we had invited over one of the interior families who was out in town for dinner and birthday cake. They just have one little boy Ezra's age and they think it's great that he and Ezra are "friends." I didn't want to break her new mommy heart and tell her that Ezra doesn't even realize her little boy exists yet. :) So we invited them for a "party."

Well, the day kinda went as planned. We had to wait til after nine til all the boys were all awake so we could turn on the blender so it was a late breakfast. Ezra tore through his presents in about five seconds, which was funny because it took him hours on Christmas. :) And he was SO possessive of everything. He didn't want to let Elijah or Caleb hold anything.... and we heard his first "mine!" Yep, he's definitely two.


The pool was fun. Ezra went down the water slide for the first time (with Dad); Caleb went out in the middle of the pool with just his water wings for the first time (he doesn't like the sensation of just floating, so he usually stays on the steps) and Elijah learned to sit on the bottom of the pool and dive for toys.... it was so much fun to see them progressing in their water abilities and just a reminder that they are growing up so fast!

Anyways, after the pool, we had planned to put the boys down for a nap... like normal. Only Ezra wouldn't sleep. We couldn't figure out what was wrong with him - tried EVERYTHING - but he just screamed and screamed for hours. Top it off - Brant had a big mess up on a huge meat order for his flights this week, so he was gone all afternoon and by 5 pm we were all a disaster. We called off dinner with our friends; we FINALLY got Ezra to stop screaming and Brant came home and gave me a 15 minute break to rest and regroup... not my idea of a fun afternoon. So dinner was way late. Ezra ended up helping me make the pizzas, which was a lot of fun. Notice his puffy little eyes.


We got the pizzas in the oven and he just crashed. We put him in bed; woke him up at 6:30 to have pizza and birthday cake and put him back in bed at 7. Not at all how we had planned the evening!

I had tried to make little car cakes with molds I have, but they didn't work. So I ended up with a huge pile of cake crumbs.... but Ezra is real into excavators and diggers, so there you have it....





We love our Ezra so much. The older boys call him "Ez" or "Ezzie" (Brant hates that). He is so babyish still - he just learned to walk about 3 months ago, so he still has that new walker toddle which is cute, but he can "zoom" when he sticks his arms out and run after his brothers. :) He loves music and "dances" whenever he hears music. His vocab is expanding by the day... For a long time he couldn't figure out what to call Caleb, but now he calls him "Kay" and Elijah he calls "Jah." His vocab includes excavator "edededer" (It really does sound like - he's got right intonation on the syllables) :) and words like "Rai" (he is terrified of rain) and "ake ou" (thank you) What is really funny (kinda, but not really) is how aggressive he is. Ezra can DEFINITELY hold his own with the two older boys; Caleb is terrified of him. :) He hits and swings toys around and screams.... oh, we are going to have our work cut out for us with this one! And we thought keeping him from getting skin cancer on the equator was going to be our big struggle with him!


Happy birthday, Ez! We love you!

PS The top picture is of the breakfast smoothies - Ezra can't handle the trauma of finishing his smoothie and being told "no more." :) And we figured out he's getting his molars - it's been a long, sleepless couple of days and nights.