What are you, 2? Sheesh.

Aidan turned 2 this past Tuesday -- I can't believe it, yikes! He's just grown up so suddenly, I feel like I blinked and he turned into a big boy. He has started talking more, too... it's always "dan [fan] on" and "garbage truck" (with a french accent) and "chips! chips! chips!" (gee, I wonder where he got that inborn obsession with deep-fried junk? Hmm. MIKE. )

I have plenty of pictures since I never seem to have time to post and people are always telling me that I'm lazy (in much nicer words of course). SO prepared to be visually assaulted with wrapping paper and festivities.

We're setting the stage... oooh, ahh... look at the craziness that was his birthday party!

Considering there was something like 10-15 children there I thought it was pretty under control. What you don't see is the 2 pools, the little tikes toddler playground and the big kid playset.

And here's the birthday boy, stuffing a chip into his mouth. Aww, tender. I found out later that the chip eating was a big trend for the day. Grandpa Williams apparently caught him double-fisting the chips, after stuffing approximately 40 of them into his mouth. My son.


As if the potato chips weren't enough, here's Aidan having some cake with Daddy and his Grandparents Silver. I don't think he was a big fan of the cake, even though I painstakingly decorated it myself and then neglected to take a photo of its wonderfulness. Did you know that whipped frosting gets really runny if you add food coloring? Also, for your future reference, red food coloring turns the frosting pink (not a super manly color for a car) and if you try to add yellow to it to hopefully save it by turning it orange... well, don't hold your breath unless you like neon pinky-orange cars. Sigh. 1 trip to the grocery store later for new frosting you've learned your lesson and the car is now a pale blue and you hate decorating cakes.


We didn't open gifts at the party, since it was basically a BBQ in disguise as a birthday party since this is the last year that he won't care... but later, after a much needed nap and much grumpery, we opened some presents. Here's his new tricycle from mom & dad... and what's this here? He's eating a chip... is anyone surprised?


Here's Aidan playing with a neat little car that you shake up a few times and then put down, and magically it zooms across the floor. He was a bit afraid of it at the beginning, and then he thought it was pretty cool... and I think now we're back to being scared. Ever since the Tickle Me Elmo incident of Christmas '06 he's been a little wary of things that move on their own. ;)


This is Aidan "sawing" into his water-doodle mat. He looooves the tools, won't put them down. The mat has a water-filled pen and when you draw on the foam squares (covered in fabric) it writes, but as it dries over the next minute or so, the writing disappears... so it's pretty fun too -- once you turn it over to the side with the fabric and stop jabbing the water pen into plain foam and complaining about how it doesn't work right.


NEXT DAY, round 2 of gift opening (I said there was much grumpery involved). Here's Aidan opening a present with help from his new tool. It turned out to be a fun little RC police car for toddlers...


Which Aidan was (surprise!) scared of, no matter how much Mike "demonstrated" and "demonstrated" and "demonstrated" for him. You don't see Aidan here because he's started crying and has run away from the toy that moves by itself. I'm sure he'll grow into it, and hopefully by the time he does Mike will not have totally drained its batteries. :)


Here's Aidan opening his neat little handmade alphabet book from Grandma Silver which is full of "numbers" (letters don't exist yet)


Tired? Yeah, me too. Aidan finished up the day by zoning out and watching his new Sesame Street DVD about counting. Isn't that a nice photo? ;)