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Matt's 2nd b'day party!

Matt's 2nd birthday party was on Saturday. We picked later in the day so he could nap, but after 2 hours of laying in his bed, I took pity on him and let him get up. Check out the previous post to see his cake, I made it to look like Toodles!


Here's Matt 'riding' Alex's big boy bike. It's still a little big for him, but he just loves sitting on it and his Uncle Tony helped him to move it along and gave him a thrill!He was a little hard to get to open the gifts. He had to take each one to his dad to try to get him to open it.
This is Matt discovering a "Ball!" at the bottom of the gift bag from Megan. The boy just loves balls.
This is Matt in the toy box that his Grandma K got him. When everyone left, he discovered it assembled in the living room, lifted the lid and climbed right in. Alex enjoyed the big box that it came in.
Matt had a great time with his family and got a lot of great stuff, he can't wait for it to be warm enough to try out his new pool from Grama and Pa, but by the end of the day he was really regretting not taking that nap.

Birthday Cakes

My sister Carrie makes my nephews beautiful cakes and so I wanted to do the same for my boys...

August 2006, Alex's 1st birthday party was Curious George themed. I had an idea in my head of making a jungle with a stream running through it, but Dennis suggested the wrong type of frosting and it was like liquid, so this was the best I could do. I was not happy and promised him (myself) I would do better next year.

August 2007, Alex's 2nd birthday party was Backyardigans themed and I went a little over board making up for his first cake. I made a double layered cake (both sides of the house) and cupcakes. The cake is decorated to look like Tyrone's house.
On some of the cupcakes I used Fondant to make the character's faces. Here's Austin, Tyrone (his favorite) and Sherman the Worman. I used Alex's stuffed versions of each character as a template for their cupcake.
Here are the cupcakes of Pablo and Austin.
Here are Sherman the Worman, Tasha and Uniqua.

June 2008, Matt's 1st Birthday Party had a Winnie the Pooh theme. It took forever to make Pooh Bear colored frosting, but I finally nailed it and Matt loved it!

August 2008, Alex wanted a Cars theme for his 3rd birthday party, so I made him Lightning McQueen!
The middle of the Lightning McQueen cake wasn't flat and with the part of the cake that I cut off I let Alex help me make the "New road!" We put Lightning McQueen and Mater toothpicks and his candles on it and he was thrilled that he got to help.

June 2009, Matt had a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 2nd birthday and I made him Toodles! I spent a lot of time looking at round cake pans on the floor of Michaels to be sure I had the right sizes for each piece. If you look close you can see an Alex sized finger dent in the green part of the cake. He got into a lot of trouble and when I got Matt up from his "not taking a nap" he took one look at the cake and stuck his finger right in the center of the left ear. There was no fixing that, so I put the candles on the cake early and used the finger hole for one of them.

A lady at Michaels was trying to help me and I told her about the cakes that Carrie makes and how I haven't taken classes yet to learn how to make the really cool stuff. She asked "Why don't you just ask her to make one for you?" and I told her "Because I'm the mom and if she can do it for her boys, then I can do it for mine." Ahhh, the true sorce of my motivation... to make my boys happy and to be as good a mom as my sister, in whatever ways I can manage.

The Rules

On the way home from the store today Alex told me to do something and when I said "No", he told me "You need to listen to me!" When I asked him why, he told me "Because it's the rules." So I asked him what these rules are and this is what he told me.
There are 5 of Alex's rules...
# 1
You have to listen to me!
#2
Don't run into trees
#3
Don't panic
#4
Don't laugh
#5
Don't make the Vuebert happy. (the Vuebert is what Dennis named my car at Mt. Rushmore last year, it's a Saturn VUE)

Funny, funny little man...

Counting with Matthew

Learning to count, Matthew style
Zero


One

Two

Three


I can't wait until he gets up to four!

Our group leader

When Dennis and I first got Stanley, way back in 2001, someone in my family said something to Stanley about going to his 'Dad', meaning Dennis. Growing up, we've always referred to my parents as Mom and Dad when talking to our animals and the animals understood who we meant, after all that's what they heard them being called all day. Dennis, however, must not have had this experience growing up because he response was to say that "I'm not his dad, it's not a family. We are more like a group and I am the leader." My family loved it and still bring his role as group leader up from time to time. I think that the title of leader has gone to Dennis' head, just a little bit. What do you think?

More hide and seek with Alex

Alex has a new found love of hide and seek. Maybe because I let him go upstairs to look all by himself now. Maybe he's just old enough to get it. I'm not sure, but he loves to play now.

Alex is going upstairs to look for his Dad. The lights are off so that Alex can use his flashlight, the boy loves flashlights. When Dennis wasn't upstairs, we looked in Alex's room, Matt's room, the closets...

...under the couch in the living room...
...in the family room he looked around and began to loose hope. He told me he couldn't find his Dad Dad anywhere (yes he says Dad twice, it's not a typo). I said that if he was going to give up the search he may as well sit down on the couch and watch a show.

He actually climbed on the couch and sat for a second before he found him. I love hide and seek with a 3 year old!