Today you are two. In an hour and a half, it will be exactly two years since you were pulled out of me and breathed your first.

Yesterday, we had a birthday party for you. It was small this year--we invited only your playmates and their parents. Since H. was sick, you were the only boy at your party. I dressed you in striped pants and a blue t-shirt. It is safe to say you looked adorable.

You did many of the same things you do every day. You ran around the backyard, digging in the sandbox, playing in the garden, drawing with chalk. But this time you had friends to join you, and lots of doting adults, and ohhh boy CAKE! Mama makes a decent carrot cake, don't you think? Watching you try to blow out your candles was so cute. You haven't quite gotten the hang of blowing, but you're getting there. You tried so hard!

Little girly O. kept bugging you to open your gifts, but you were not all that interested. I had to keep offering, over and over, until finally you started to realize that cool toys and books were coming from those packages.

By the end of the day, it was just you and your daddy out there, playing with your new tape recorder. Your dad was the one who picked it out for you and made the tape of music for it. It was easily your favorite gift, which made me very happy. Daddy is so good at picking out gifts, isn't he?

That night, you went to sleep with a belly full of cake, and around four o'clock on the morning of your actual birthday, you woke up crying. I got up to see you, thinking you'd gotten a tummyache from all the sugar, but you had suddenly gotten a head cold and you were too stuffy to sleep. I brought you back to our bed, where you insisted on sleeping right on top of me. As you lay with your heavy head on my stomach, and then my chest, and then my leg, I was struck with the full reality of your size; you are certainly not a baby anymore. You will never again fit under my armpit, curled like a kitten against my side. You are full of heaviness and angles. You're a boy. We all shifted around to find a comfortable spot in the bed--cat included--and fell into bits of sleep. I found myself stuck between you, snoring from your stuffy nose, and your daddy, snoring because he just does. I could not have been happier! My boys.

Today was an uneventful day. It's Columbus Day, so we didn't even get any mail. Your grandma called to wish you a happy birthday, so did your grandpa. You slept and watched a little extra TV because that is what I did when I was a kid and I was sick on my birthday.

Your mom spent a lot of time looking at you today, wondering at all that you are, and thinking about how worth all the pain of birth you are. You are everything, my son. Happy birthday. I love you.