Amazingly Awesome Two

After Aiden was born, we had to adjust our routine. When you are awake three times in the middle of the night, you are not getting up before your two year old to get ready. So in came Go, Diego, Go! (In case you don't know, it is a kids show akin to Dora, the Explorer, as she is his cousin and she does make frequent camios on the show--but Diego loves animals and is an animal rescuer in the jungle who speaks Spanish). Thanks to Netflix that has all three season on play instantly, I was able to get a shower and sometimes on particularly difficult days I was able to feed Aiden in peace as well.

So when it came time to get ready for Kyle's second birthday the obvious theme choice was Diego. My sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to let us use their backyard and house for his party as we can't hold enough people at ours and don't have an outdoor setting. This is super late post, so keep in mind his 2 year party/birthday were September 12th. :) It was a small family party with both sides of our family being able to attend.


We did presents, Kyle got (not really part of his birthday funds, but just something else for him to open) his monkey costume for Halloween that we had bought the week previous at the Carter's outlet in Park City. By the way, love having a little child were they can be present when you buy them their gifts and it doesn't ruin the party in the least.



Both babies were present for the festivities and my mom.


Oliver is the one who will be responsible for teaching Kyle sports. Here he is playing with his new balls, particularly his "baseball" (the "k" sound is hard to make, give a 2 year old a break).


This is his cake, and I had to blow it out as his little puffs just don't do much. I made it, but more on that to come.


This is the dairy free, soy free cake and frosting that I made. The design was my friend's suggestion and although I looked everywhere for Diego toys, with the advent of Toy Story 3 you can't find them anywhere except online and I didn't have that much foresight. So there are two candles, the 2 and Diego, luckily we already had baby jaguar as a hand-me-down toy. But Zurchers did have the Diego sugar faces, cups, plates, napkins, those sorts of things (we also had blowers) in Diego theme.


This is the cake at the actual party, we had to transport it in close to 80 degree weather. In making the cake, I used coconut oil as a butter replacement. It works great because it is solid at 72 degrees and below and liquid above that. I did not consider that on the car ride over the oil would liquefy in the car and separate from the frosting. Puddles of oil started to pool on the cake and around the cake. It was disgusting and really upsetting to me. We put it in the fridge at Heidi's house, but it just turned the liquid oil into hard white pools around the cake. It seemed to only affect the frosting so the cake turned out fine and everyone told me not to worry it was fine. But the whole sides of frosting had slide down and the cake broke while coming out of the pan anyway, so it started to separate again without the frosting to hold it in place. When you spend hours making a cake--it just was horrible. Although no one besides me saw it that way. The cake tasted fine though, luckily. But here are the after pictures to show the effects of sun on coconut oil. Next year, no fancy cake, just a pinata.


This was sitting on his presents, eating pizza. He was pleased with his little perch.


He got a tool set from Mammi and Papa. He loved it. This is him several days later while watching his morning dose of Go, Diego, Go!



We just love two. It is Evan's favorite age so far, although he has loved every stage more than the last up to this point---Kyle has gotten so verbal and fun to play with. He is amazingly quick (show/tell him once and you'll regret it. For instance, how to climb to get your cell phone on the kitchen counter while you are feeding the baby---bad idea) and very sweet. But don't think he's not demanding, controlling, or exacting although I don't know where that comes from.