Skip to main content

Sven's Second Birthday

Sven is TWO!  (Look out everybody, here comes big trouble.)

This is what we did to celebrate:

1. It was Saturday, so I made our traditional pancake breakfast.  But I shaped the pancakes like letters of the alphabet!  Because that's cool, right?  Sven helped me put in the chocolate chips.

2. After breakfast, I put on Sven's birthday shirt.  It has been sitting, folded and waiting, in his dresser for the past six months.  Today was it's big day to shine!  Once he was dressed, Sven and I practiced telling his age.  "How old are you?"  "Six."  "No!  You're two!"

3. A few days before, Sven helped me pick out a cake.  It was funfetti, of course.  So after breakfast, we mixed it up and put some cupcakes in the oven. Sven was really upset about the whole mixing process.  He seemed to think that everything was ruined.  After an hour in the oven, I started to wonder if maybe he hadn't been right.  The cupcakes baked (and baked and baked) and never really got done.  Unbeknownst to me, our oven was on its way out and couldn't keep temperature.  We didn't figure that out until a few days later.  On Sven's birthday, I just thought I must have done something wrong!  So we mixed up a new cake (lemon this time) and made the cupcakes in a neighbor's oven.


4. While the cupcakes were cooking (which was an eternity, it seemed), Sven opened his birthday present from me: a ball!  Audrey told me that was a lame present but he seemed pretty pleased with it.  He went outside to play right away.

5. After the cupcakes were done, we all went to the Children's museum.  We had an explorer's pass so it was free!  Yeah!  The Homer family came with us, ostensibly so that Sven would have a friend his age there.  But he didn't really play with Charlie.  Two-year-olds care more about toys than kids.

6. We went to the food court for lunch and Sven requested that we eat at "the bear store" (aka Panda Express).  So we shared a panda feast with the Homers.  To accompany it, there were lemon cupcakes with blue frosting and fish sprinkles!  

7. During Sven's nap, Soren and Carl went to DI with me.  They wanted to buy presents, which I thought was very generous of them.  Of course, they picked out stuff that *they* liked.  Soren got a wooden race car; Carl picked some weird pink mechanical bug (sans batteries).  Sven was intrigued by both but they didn't have much staying power.

8. Scott and I went on a date that night, so the boys had man and cheese and more cake with a babysitter.  They love that.  We did sing and do candles before we left.  While we were gone, they got to watch a truly, crummy movie, the kind of garbage their mom would never let them watch.  And they were talking about how hilarious it was for weeks to come, so I think it was good times.

9. Presents from the grandparents came a few days later:  some play food from the Bergs and a board book (Max's Bath!) from the Duedes.  When we move, I plan to buy a play kitchen with money from the great-grandparents.  For now, Sven is flush with new toys and gaining more attitude with each passing day.

Happy Birthday, Sven!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. Scott has also really taken

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp