2 years old

So, since we haven’t made any friends out here and family wasn’t about to come visit our tiny apartment of poverty, MM’s birthday was just the three of us. I didn’t care that much, I mean, he’s 2. He doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t really understand what birthdays are beyond the Yo Gabba Gabba episode about it, and he likes us best of all anyway. I still wanted to make it special for him though, and since he had been quite into “FUSH!” (fish) lately, I went to the dollar store and found some cheap and fun decorations for him. It’s handy that it’s back to school time, because there was a lot of teacher material with fishies on it that I could use.

I put blue wrapping paper on the walls in a couple places and put those little bulletin board boarder things around it, then Hubs made fish out of construction paper. I hung crinkled streamers as seaweed, and they were a big hit with the boy the next morning, because they made a swishing sound every time you walked down the hallway.

The first gift he got was an actual fish, from the tanks at the store that he ALWAYS asks to go see. The fish did not live very long, as we expected, but Hubs did save its little fishy life a couple times, once when a cat knocked it off the counter Lady-and-the-Tramp style and it was suffocating on the carpet, and once when the water got super murky, but then we put water conditioning tablets in the water and it died. Go figure. By that point though, it had been three days so MM had forgotten the thing existed.

When he opened his other gifts he did the completely natural thing of immediately saying, “more?” the moment he opened them without even giving them a second look but it. Was. Pissing. Me. Off. Ungrateful little beast! But he did get into the markers we got him and spent some time drawing.

Then we sat at the table and made fish magnets, which I don’t have a picture of even though they were on our fridge for months. We used foam paper and glitter glue and googly eyes and little pompoms and he had a blast getting messy and a further blast washing his hands.

After nap, I put him in his birthday shirt for a quick, uncooperative picture.

Here’s a comparison from last year:

And we went out to this children’s farmstead that we’ve frequented. We go there because living out here means goats, and lots of goats, apparently.

It was about 18,000 degrees out, but we lasted about an hour before we all melted into puddles of goo.

We walked through the butterfly garden, mostly because there was some shade, but all the butterflies were elsewhere, not letting their wings light on fire from the air around us.

The best part of the trip was when we sat next to the 7′x7′ fan in the shade and ate grapes. THAT was nice.

When we were done, we went home and had fishcake

And sang happy birthday to the boy. He put his finger right in the hot wax the moment I blew out the candle, but didn’t seem fazed by it in the slightest.

And why would he, for his attitude about cake changed in the last year from “EW” to this:

The last gift we gave him was a water/sand table that will stay simply a water table as long as I’m breathing. He went crazy on it as Hubs and I were counting the minutes until bedtime so we could rest.

All in all a great birthday: quiet, fun, full of 2-year-old joy.

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