Happy Birthday, SBJ

My big two year old boy!! (shirt idea totally stolen from Mayhem's son's 2nd birthday)

















James devouring his cake...

















We bowed to his obsession with trains and had a train themed party. I was insanely proud of myself for assembling/frosting this cake... I hate baking but enjoy this one project each year.

...The only thing that would have made his birthday more perfect would have been hearing from S. That thick, fat pride and love you have for your child... I wish she and I could share in that together.. plus, selfishly, I miss her and I know with the passing of James' birthday... she's likely hurting with very few people to reach out to. I think of her every day.

James is starting to grasp concepts so fast, I cant keep up with all the milestones he's hitting. His latest fascination is letters -- he knows about half the letters of the alphabet by sight consistently, though he will confuse them if they look similar sometimes... D and P, etc. All this is self-led too, which rocks. He's still slightly speech delayed... but finally talking in two and three word sentences... his vocabulary and ennunciation skills still need some work, but it's been a really encouraging few months speech-wise.

He's definitely heading into the toddler push and pull of wanting control yet wanting to be babied-- we have huge battles getting him into a grocery cart, for example, but overall he's still the same funny, affectionate, genuinely kind little guy.. just a slightly bigger, grocery-cart hating version.

At two, James loves: trains, Elmo, babies, dancing to Beyonce, making pancakes or cookies with J, making huge block towers and then maniacally knocking them down, offering hugs to avoid dreaded diaper changes, long toy-filled baths, his family to include honorary aunties and uncles, playing with playdoh, saying "WOW MAMA" all day long, and 'helping' us do everything from fold clothes to vaccum (he'll even lift up the fabric floor panel on our couch to vaccuum under it with his toy vaccuum) to feeding the pets.

J and I remain desperately in love.

<3 <3 to my big boy.