On Wednesday, our little Simon turned two years old. We did our traditional waking up video, but Simon was not happy to be woken up.
He soon cheered up, and we told him it was his birthday many times that morning, but he didn't seem to really understand. We sent him off to school, armed with a dozen cupcakes for his classmates. It's so weird sometimes because we're used to Alice being aware of things like this now, but Simon still seems to just figure it out as he goes. For example, did he really even know, when he ate that cupcake at snack today, that it was because it was his birthday? Furthermore, did he even eat the cupcake? His teachers say he did, but we have our doubts because although Simon has quite a sweet tooth, he never seems particularly interested in cake.
That afternoon, Zac and I met at daycare at 4pm to witness Simon's around the sun ceremony. It was a repeat of the end of year celebration in that he clung to me tightly and just wanted to go home. At least he wasn't screaming. He did let out a squeal whenever I moved towards his teachers or bent down, since he interpreted those movements as me preparing to leave him there. At any rate, we got through the ceremony which was disappointing because the did not even have a real candle in the middle.
The ceremony was so pointless because it was just torturing Simon, that I joked with Zac, "Aren't you glad you left work early for that?" But the nice thing was that we got home early, and had time to open presents before supper. I had laid out the table with presents and a Thomas balloon for Simon. He was pretty excited when we got home and he saw the presents. So was Alice.
Alice is our official present-opener. It was a bit annoying though, because I wish Simon had been more integrally involved in opening his own presents. But then, I remember when Alice turned two she just opened one present and wanted to play with it, and we had to keep coaxing her to open the next present. So maybe it was OK that Simon had some help this year, especially since he kept wandering off to play with trains.
They played with the elephant that blows butterflies for a long time, then got back to opening the other presents.
After all the presents were finally opened, we had supper. I'd planned two of Simon's favorite foods: green beans and macaroni and cheese. We also had fish sticks, because they were easy, and I didn't want to have to spend a long time cooking tonight. Simon was very happy with his supper, and kept saying, "Yummy supper!"
Then, it was finally time for cake. Zac had labored long the night before decorating this beautiful, colorful cake for Simon.
Blowing out his birthday candles seemed like the moment he'd been training for his whole life (with all his bubble blowing.) The cool thing, as Zac pointed out, was that you could sort of see it dawn on him that, in this tradition he had seen take place so many times before, it was finally his turn to blow out the candles. And blow and blow and blow.
Alice was a bit obnoxious, since she was not the center of attention, but I thought she did reasonably well at supporting Simon. We did finally take a break from blowing out the candles to get Alice a slice of the cake that she so desperately wanted to eat.
Ten minutes later, Simon was still blowing out the birthday candles. He had no interest in eating cake.
When the candles had finally dwindled, we took them out for the last time. Simon actually put one whole one in his mouth and started chewing on it, probably because the wax was soft. Weird kid.
After the cake, we went outside to let the kids ride bikes on the sidewalk for a little bit before bedtime.
All in all, I'm so happy our little guy is two. He's getting to be so much fun, when he isn't throwing a tantrum!
