The Day We Celebrated Emily’s 2nd Birthday

For Emily’s 2nd birthday, we celebrated a few days early so she could have a nice relaxing day with the whole family.  Grandma Carol was also visiting, so it was extra special to have her with us for the event. 

Emily is C-R-A-Z-Y about the Bubble Guppies on Nick Jr., so we knew that had to be her theme this year.  Unfortunately, it is a new show and as of her birthday, the only merchandise they sell is one coloring book and one Golden book.  Fortunately, they have 9 million printables on-line so we created our own Bubble Guppies party for her.

Since she is only two, we wondered if she would really care much about the decorations… she did.  She LOVED everything – so much so, that once the party was over, the decorations have moved up to her bedroom.

 

We had everything ready to go when she woke up from her nap.  She was so excited about her cake that we started with some candles and singing.  She loved blowing out her candles and kept asking for “more fire.”

  

Brooke thought blowing out candles looked fun so she decided to offer some unsolicited help.

    

Emily was ok with that for about a picosecond and then she waved her off and told her “BLOW MINE!”  Brooke didn’t quite listen so we had to tell her to stop.  As you can see from the photo below, Emily liked watching her sister get reprimanded.

    

Next up, it was time for presents.  She started with one from her sisters and was tickled to find a talking and dancing Elmo.  After a few minutes of playing with Elmo, we asked her if she was ready to open up more presents.  She responded matter-of-factly, “Nope, I’m good.”  So we let her play a little bit longer.

When we convinced her to move on, she was also thrilled to open up her very own laptop.  Brooke commented that Elmo and the laptop looked “just like the ones [she] had when [she] was that age.”  That’s a funny thing about toys at our house, they have a tendency to disappear when kids get tired of or outgrow them and then magically reappear when the next child in line turns the appropriate age.  The older one(s) play along and the younger one(s) are none the wiser.  Win-win.  Heaven knows that NO FAMILY needs more than one talking/singing/dancing Muppet.

  

Next up she opened her most highly anticipated (by the entire family) gift – a Leapster.  Emily really really really wanted one so she could be just like Brooke and Katelyn and have her very own electronic device.  Brooke and Katelyn really really really wanted her to have her own device so she would quit stealing wanting to use theirs.  This “new” Leapster (circa 2006) debuted with Katelyn and made a spectacular reappearance out of the magic bin for Brooke in 2009.  It was still in really good shape with only a few pixels that quit working.  Since Emily is only two, we figured she’d never notice and it would probably keep her happy until Christmas.  Emily was so excited when she opened it up and she couldn’t wait to play with it.  The only problem was that she wasn’t blinded by it’s awesomeness or the cool factor of having her own Leapster for very long.  Instead she wanted to play the coloring game and noticed instantly that she couldn’t get all of the colors to work.  The pixel problem was of paramount importance.  She was so frustrated.  She tried hard to love it and her sisters tried hard to help her, but to no avail.  She would play happily for a bit but then she would get stuck because something wouldn’t work… so we distracted her with more presents that were actually new.

  

She had fun opening and playing with her other presents and loved the help from her sisters.

  

The next thing she got really excited about was a new outfit.  She squealed with delight when she saw it and said excitedly, “Clothes on!”  So she tried on her outfit and loved it.  I didn’t expect a two year old to be excited about new clothes.

 

Then she opened up a new dress and darling pink dress coat from her aunts in Boise.  She was so excited and immediately demanded, “Coat on!”  As soon as it was on, she admired herself and proclaimed, “Fancy!”  We all had a good laugh about that one.

The picture below in the top left corner sums it up perfectly… she loved every part of her day in her own special Emily way.

Her sisters had so much fun helping her with her gifts and there were a few presents that we so cool, Brooke couldn’t contain her excitement.

After present time, we had birthday dinner.  The grown-ups ate Kyle’s amazing homemade crab cakes and the kids had Emily’s favorite, SpaghettiOs. 

Then we had more singing time and finally ate some cake.

We told Emily to “take a bite” of her cake when we placed it in front of her, so she did.  She bent over and took a bite.  She was relieved when we gave her a fork, that is definitely her preferred method.

We also had special Birthday Cake Oreos.  Even though they are celebrating 100 years of Oreo, we used them to celebrate Emily’s big day too.  Brooke said they taste like pancake batter.  Yum.

It was such a fun day and the best part, is that her actual birthday was still to come.