I have a two year old...

With Oliver and Zoe in the house, I often find myself thinking back to the days of Benjamin being a newborn. That feels like yesterday so it's really pretty amazing that he's now a full blown, 2 year old toddler!

We celebrated his actual birthday by spending the morning at the zoo. We go there a lot, but this trip was extra fun because Jason, Janelle and Sadie got to join us AND all of the animals were walking around and coming right up to the glass. They must have known there was a birthday boy walking by ;)

I love this short little video of B telling us how old he is. If you're wondering what he's doing with his fingers by his nose...he's making elephant tusks (since we'd just passed an elephant with huge tusks).

The next day we had a very small, NON PARTY for Benjamin. This is such a crazy time in our lives so I decided early on that we weren't going to have a birthday party this year...since Benjamin doesn't even understand birthdays yet, I figured we could easily get away with not having a party. I did, however, still want to celebrate our big boy, and to do that, I decided on making some Elmo and Cookie Monster cupcakes. Then I got to thinking about the fact that we were going to end up with 2 dozen cupcakes (or more) with only a few of us to eat them. So a few days before his "non party" I sent an email to Benjamin's closest friends (those he sees every week and recognizes) inviting them to join us for cheese pizza and cupcakes. Everyone was laughing about my insistence on calling it a non party because it really did look like a party (I couldn't help but put a few Sesame street decorations out). Honestly though, the only time consuming part was making and decorating the cupcakes, but that took all of an hour and I had Janelle to help me...thanks J!

Just like last year, our birthday boy seemed confused by everyone singing to him, wasn't interested in blowing out his candles and didn't like making a mess out of his cupcake. Maybe he'll get into it when he turns 3 :)