Sam's Second Birthday Bash - March 9, 2014

Yes, you would be correct.  This happened in March.

We have a two-year-old, folks!  

An insanely busy, fun-loving, slightly ornery, extremely curious, all-boy little two-year-old.   

The couple of weeks lead up to this celebration certainly did not happen the way I expected them to, but a wonderful birthday bash was had in the end.

We were not completely sure who to invite this year, because of one major thing.  Zach hasn't started training yet, so we are not designated to any specific squadron.  This puts us in an "all or nothing" situation….we either invite no one from the area, or we have the snowball effect of me knowing a few moms and their kids from playgroup, and Zach works with their husbands, but he also works with these ten other guys who also have multiple kids and if we invite these people we have to invite those people….too many people.  Too many kids.  Brand new basement that we literally JUST finished.  The carpet was put down the week before the party.

So we ended up inviting our families and two military families that are also here with us, but that we also knew in Minot.  It still allowed for some kids/friends to be around without overloading us.

Thank goodness we did it that way.   

The week prior to the party (invitations were already out), Zach finally got into a neurosurgeon to check out his back problem.  He has had issues since I've known him, but it has gotten worse recently.  We were both getting pretty frustrated with his situation (for different reasons), so this appointment with a specialist was a relief to both of us; however, we were taken a little off guard when the doctor said that Zach's best option would be to have surgery.  He could get him in the following Wednesday….three whole days before Sam's party.  Knowing that it just needed to get done, he went through with it.  We were in Kansas City that Wednesday morning, he stayed overnight in the hospital (my mom was here with Sam so I could stay with Zach), and we came home that next day with a bag full of meds and the expectation that we maybe wouldn't see much of Zach during the birthday.

We were pleasantly surprised, though.   I  did the majority of my party planning from the waiting room of the hospital (thank you Amazon Prime), it all arrived Friday, and I put it together Thursday and Friday nights.  We had ourselves quite the little celebration.

"Sam's Celebration Crew Enter Here"

Hydration Station with "Sam Digs Being 2" waters and lemonade

Dig In buffet

Build-A-Burger station

Lumber and Concrete

Pipes, Drill Bits, and Rocks

Instead of traditional birthday party hats, we did construction hard hats.
Somehow we bamboozled everyone into wearing one….

…even my 88 year-old grandfather.

Real-made-from-scratch-not-healthy-at-all chocolate cake.
Best day of his life.

The big birthday gift was hiding out in the basement.

A little yoga after the party to wind down.

One of his gifts was a Dusty Crophopper from the movie
"Planes."   We watched it that night…the entire "Crusty
Pophopper" movie, as Sam calls it.

Big two-year-old pic.  Haven't taken one of these since his one year
photo in Minot.

My two-year-old and me.

February to March

February!  

Sam had a Valentine's Day party at Parents' Day Out, which was so darn cute.

A bunch of two-year-olds handing out treats to each other?

  I loved it.

I found the card online (it says "I Dig You" with a construction truck on it) from Paging Supermom.  I got some heart bags and shovels from the Dollar Store and we put in an organic apple juice box, Toy Story stickers, organic lollipops, and some squishy/bouncy ball thing.  He was quite excited to be handing out shovels to his friends.  

Here are some pictures from before school.  The party was a few days before Valentine's Day since he only goes one day a week.

He wanted to hold the entire bag, but made this
"this bag is way too heavy for me" face right away.

The next day, we went to a Valentine's Day party at a neighbor's house.  It was a group of kids and moms from the neighborhood….we had snacks, did crafts, and even managed to get a full group picture after MANY attempts.   We were wrangling kids for about 30 minutes.

By the time we got to the real day, I'm sure he was over the pink-red-heart theme, but oh well.

I didn't write down really anything from this month except that we did a lot of cooking….interesting detail to document.  

Sam and I went to Topeka on a Wednesday night  (which is why Zach couldn't go) to celebrate my dad's 65th birthday.  We surprised him, which made it that much more fun.  Dad was in watching tv and Sam quietly came around the corner and waited for my dad to look over. 

Cake with Papa

We spent a lot of time at home because we had painters and carpet guys here finishing the basement, so it was a pretty low-key month.  He continues to talk more and more every day…words, phrases, songs, opinions that we sometimes don't even know where they came from.   Lots of imaginary play (toys talking to one another, toys talking to him)

I asked him what he was making and he said "I'm makin' roast beef."
?
Weird.

The family next door to us have FIVE girls all under the age
of ten years old.  They have a trampoline in their backyard,
so he occasionally will supervise from our back window….
:)

The carpet guys had JUST left, and we were determined to let Sam
run around in the basement before nap.  It is still very much a work in
progress…but we are getting closer!