Here’s some pictures from the munchkin’s birthday and the morning after.

This one is from first thing in the morning when he was opening the presents that Great-Gran from England sent while Mum had her on the phone.

Paddington Bear is apparently better read upside down.

Here’s the amazing cake that Becka made, it has Sarah from LBT on it, and then Clifford, Elmo and Curious George all having a party.

Blowing out the candles (not that you can really see that portion of things)

The fire pit in action

The next day Mum came over and the munchkin took her outside and patted the bike and told her “Seat! Seat!” so she had to sit down and show him how the bike worked.

It was a good time had by all, as I said before. Munchkin keeps asking me to sit on his bike too, but I can’t bend down that low…it’s been so tiring lately that my limbs are too achy thanks to the fibromyalgia. Stupid illnes.

Seriously, they make life SO much easier.
When we first decided to get this place I had several friends comment that the tile floors would be horrible, but I love having them. They’re so much easier than carpet.
The previous owners left us steam cleaners, and a Swiffer wetjet so I didn’t even have to buy anything special to clean them with, and especially now that we have a cat AND a two-year old, they’re a Godsend.

Any time the munchkin whips off his diaper and marks his territory or the cat decides she wants to puke up a lizard on the floor while it’s gross, it’s not a four hour repeat dab/clean job, just wipe and wash.

I remember when the munchkin was a few months old and I had carelessly left barbeque sauce out within his reach we were cleaning that carpet stain for MONTHS and it was still there when we moved out, the other day he spilled twice as much barbeque sauce and you can’t tell!

It’s great. I don’t think I’m ever going back to carpet.

I think it’s safe to say the munchkin had a good birthday. He’s flaked out willingly and gone to bed. He wound up not having a nap. He got a lot of nice gifts, and we all ate a lot of good food, and he got to play with our friend’s children. We had a mini-incident, where he pushed my friend’s daughter because he wasn’t getting his way about something and had to be put in time-out but overall everyone got along well.

He was spoiled rotten really. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow of the amazing cake that my friend made. She made him the dragon last year, and this year she did a cake with several characters on it seeing as we couldn’t decide, so it had Sarah from “Land Before Time” on it, Clifford, Curious George and Elmo all sitting around presents and a little birthday cake. It was amazing. She’s apparently made a Smurf house before too. I’d love to see pictures of that one.

The munchkin himself got a nice list of gifts.
From my Mum he got two sets of pajamas, 101 Dalmations pictures for his room, a Thomas the Tank Engine interactive DVD/book, two plushie Cars from CARS.
From our friends he got sidewalk chalk, a ball, a training bicycle, $40, pillows, bed sheets, a toy chainsaw, and some clothes.
From us he got the party, Curious George in a police car, several board books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Very Busy Spider, Cookie Dance) and a t-shirt that says “Reasons why I’m in Trouble: 1. Won’t Share 2. Won’t Give Mum a Break 3. Refuse to Nap 4. Keep Breaking Stuff”
My Gran sent him a cute pants/t-shirt set that says “Cheeky Monkey” on it, and a Paddington Bear book and a teach/turn book which is neat, I haven’t seen anything like it before, it shows you how to tell time and count by turning dials on different pages to match the story.

Last Sunday we had a mini-party at my FILs and they got him a neat phone which you can record messages on so that you can talk to the child through the phone and a dump truck to play in the yard with, and a couple of outfits, a plushie basketball and a bubble wand.

One of our friends showed up early to clear out brush from the back yard so that we had more kindling for the fire pit. It kept a nice fire going for most of the afternoon so we were able to randomly make smores, and toast marshmallows, and then we also made hot dogs and burgers and turkey burgers, and our friends brought meatballs, black bottom pie, tiramisu and the one set brought the birthday cake.

We have tons of leftover food so we should be going for a few days. So, that’s nice. I’m tired after all the prep work over the past few days and definitely don’t want to be cooking or anything like that.

I think I’m going to go have myself a piece of birthday cake given I didn’t get any really today. I had a bit of the black bottom pie and the tiramisu though. It was so funny, the munchkin was so excited when I lit the candles that he didn’t wait until the end of “Happy Birthday” to blow them out. I wound up having to relight the right as the song was getting to the end so that he could blow them out again.

I think he had a fun time though. There was one hilarious point where a friend of ours was spinning the laser pointer around the living room floor and the kids were all going nuts chasing it. The grown ups had some fun tag-teaming each other in “Super Smash Brothers” which we got for the Wii last week. That was my game treat seeing as hubbie has “Grand Theft Auto IV” on pre-order.

Today is the munchkin’s second birthday, it’s still a long strange trip. This time two years ago I’d just been given the wonderful epidural and professed my love for the anesthetist. We’d been in hospital overnight. I was on a pitocin drip and my water had broken just before 7 a.m. I was told to nap for a couple of hours and then we tried standard delivery but the child with the huge head he got stuck, and so he wound up being delivered by C-Section at 4:28 p.m. on 4/26/06. He was 9lbs 6oz and 20 3/4 inches long.

Right now I’m not sure exactly how tall he is, somewhere approaching 3 feet, and he weighs about 35lbs. He’s currently trying to rescue a chameleon from the cat, and playing in the newly fenced off yard, while Gran and I clean up and prep to cook and a friend of ours is helping keep an eye on him and clear up the yard around the fire pit and get more fire wood chopped ready for marshmallow cooking later on.

Here’s a few pictures showing how he’s changed over the past two years.

The first picture of him ever taken. He was about fifteen minutes old at this time, and still angry as you can see. Mum took this one as he was being taken to the “waiting area” for his other grandparents to see him.

This one was taken a few days before his first birthday.

And this one is him this morning. More interested in other things than the camera.

My little baby is definitely looking more like a little boy.

At least in our house it is. Today’s the day I become a U.S. citizen! The ceremony is in the city, and my Mum’s coming along with my husband and the munchkin. This is good for many reasons, not least of which we can go in her car which is a lot roomier for four people and has GPS navigation.

I may be able to register to vote right at the ceremony, but if not, when I got my husband’s voter’s registration card updated I found out where and how to register so I can do it after the weekend, because this weekend the munchkin turns two! So, Friday is better spent with last minute preparations for the party that we’re having than waiting in line at the voter’s registration office. I still have to pick up things for smores, attach the wire fence to the fence posts now that the cement is dry and clean up around the fire pit, something which I can’t do until the fence is across the yard so the munchkin can’t escape while I’m trying to work.

I hope he behaves today. I’m not sure what is involved in the swearing in ceremony other than having to say the Pledge. The letter they sent doesn’t really explain things. I’m sure I can find something out through Google or Wikipedia though.

The munchkin has been fully in the terrible twos as I’ve said several times over the past few days. It’s been rough. There’s been a lot of whinging and whining on both his and my parts, and some frustration and a whole lot of time outs and tears.

However this morning I heard him out in the front room and my husband talking to him and decided to get up given I was awake and had just been lying there meditating for a bit. I walked out and he goes, “MUMMY!” and ran over and hugged my legs, and then ran back and hugged my husband’s legs and then came back to mine and hugged me again.

I was joking to my husband that he was having to build back up the deficit his previous behavior had left, but even so my heart is pretty full this morning and I’m reassured that we’re doing a good job. I’m no longer making secret plans to go to a condo hotel and abdicate my maternal responsibilities.

Seriously though, it is good to know that something’s sinking in. Maybe he will make it to his birthday after all.

Two days in a row now before lunch I’ve decided that I wanted to go back to bed and start the day over.

Yesterday the munchkin threw BBQ sauce all over the place trying to put some on his bread, and destroyed the bathroom, and then stripped his diaper off and spread poop around.

Then this morning he came out to see me butt naked and covered in poop, and while I was trying to track down the missing diaper I discovered that the reason he’d been playing so quietly in his room was because he’d found a bag of chips and thrown them all in his crib.

Five days until he turns two. I’m not sure I’m going to survive this next year!

One of the problems we’re experiencing in our house is lack of storage space, or more accurately storage space of the wrong type. There are many things that we need to store but can’t use certain cupboards and cabinets for because of the almost-two-year-old tornado (the munchkin). For example, we have some liquor and it would be great to use wine racks for that, but I’ve seen at his grandparent’s house that wine racks are disastrous if they’re kept at lower level, and we have no where stable enough to keep a wine rack at a level out of his reach, so all the liquor is on top of the fridge, which disrupts the use of the above-the-fridge cabinets.

The other night he tipped over one of the DVD cabinets we have, well, actually, the only remaining DVD cabinet that we have (the rest of the DVDs are on wall racks). This cabinet stores the DVD box sets which won’t fit in the wall racks because they’re too wide. Now the glass door is broken off and the cabinet is essentially a shelf now. I’m just thankful that he isn’t all scratched up from the glass breakage, because as I was telling the man at Ace Hardware yesterday you can’t put a price on your child’s life.

I was ordering some wire fencing because we ran out and have only done half the fence, and he says, “Well, that’s our most expensive by-the-foot, just so you know, we have some other that’s half the price,” and I said, “Yes, but if I get that with the bigger gauge, he’ll be able to climb the fence easily, but the other with the tiny squares (1/4 inch) he won’t be able to climb, and the whole point of the fence is to keep him in the back yard so he doesn’t escape and get run over on the street,”

“Good point,” the guy replied and cut me 25 feet of fence wire, because it’s so worth $75 of fence to know my son’s safe, right?

It’s a bit frustrating that the replacement keyboard for the laptop hasn’t come in yet. It’s making things more than a little difficult to keep up with. Add to that the demands for time that the munchkin puts on me now that he’s less than a week away from turning two and it’s a wonder I get anything done.

I’m quite pleased with the progress around the house though. I’ve got a second toy holder put together for the munchkin’s room so that he has more space to keep his things and with a friend’s help with got a good start on the fencing in the yard. Although my Mum, who was babysitting yesterday, discovered that the munchkin can squeeze through the gap between the wall and the fence. Doesn’t it just figure? We have ways of rectifying that though, because there’s actually cement mix now to put the fence posts in the ground with, rather than just the sandy soil.

We’re planning his birthday party for next Saturday, that should be fun. Hopefully the weather is nice then we can roast marshmallows over the fire pit, which also needs to be finished.

I’ve been missing certain important things for several days now. Two weeks ago my driver’s license and debit card went missing. Nothing was done with them, so I’m beginning to wonder if the munchkin isn’t responsible for that as well, and hasn’t flushed them or something. I’ve canceled the debit card and should hopefully have a replacement soon, as well as the replacement driver’s license.

Then last Sunday my cell phone went missing!

Great!

Well, today I’ve been doing a major clean up of the house and on the upside my cell phone has resurfaced and is currently charging. When I realized it was missing the first thing I did was try to call it and find out where it was, but it was dead so all I got was voice mail. Wonderful, right? Well, it turns out my husband did have it, it was in the pocket of a pair of his trousers which had gotten under the couch.

I would swear we have gremlins, but it’s invariably just the munchkin. Oy, vey!

In other good news I got the delivery confirmation that the IRS got our tax return so hopefully within the next couple of weeks we should have our refund.