Birthday Festivities, Teeth Pulling and the 4th

Man, we've been busy!

I posted yesterday that my little guy turned 2. And that he did. We celebrated his day with a birthday party at school (daycare!) Then, we continued his day at Chuck E. Cheese with Nana (which he absolutely loved and DIDN'T want to leave) and finished his day with a visit from Mimi and Papa. Pictures from all of that will come later...

First, I've got loads of photos to post from the past week or so. We celebrated MD's birthday 2 Saturdays ago and really had a good time. He had balloons and kids and animals and a Mickey Mouse birthday cake to play with. I think his highlight, though, was blowing out his birthday candles - as he still talks about that.

Mommy's special homemade cake!

The "2" wouldn't stay lit. Good thing I included a few star candles.

A few of MD's buddies

A few days later we had some family photos taken. My good friend, Jim, is always so sweet to head out with my little family a few times a year and snap away. I tell ya, I don't know how Tori and Dean do it. Taking pictures with a toddler is next to impossible. MD was a ham for the camera when it was just him. But, the second - and I mean second - one of us would try to wrangle him into a family portrait, all heck would break loose! The tears and screaming would start. We tried bribery with suckers and big, bouncy balls. But, we really just ended up looking like those parents who "reward" their kid for screaming. Either way, we did get some great shots and here are a few:

Two days later, I had my 3 widsom teeth taken out! See, my company was closed last week (you know, to save money) and we've learned it's not a good idea to keep MD out of daycare for more than 1 week at a time. So, I took advantage (I think!) of the situation and scheduled my torture, I mean surgery. Actually, the procedure went well. Two of my teeth came out like a snap. The third one was a bit stubborn and required some chiseling. Yah, not fun. But, all-in-all, it's done. I'm still in pain. I really miss cereal and chips and am getting tired of potato salad. But, the worse really is over, though - I think!

Shew, you still with me? Next was the July 4th festivities. Our sweet town of Harrisburg puts on a pretty good show. There was the parade Saturday morning; games, food and such at the park in the afternoon; then fireworks that night. We thought we'd give the fireworks a try with MD. He really did great! The first big boom took him by surprise and he made a beeline for daddy's lap. But, after a few minutes he was fine. He enjoyed them for the first 5 minutes or so but then got bored. So, he and his cousin Sawyer, decided to have a little Lite Brite fun in the back of mommy's car - picture below.

Summer really has been a lot of fun so far. Minus the swimming pool (that MD won't touch!) we've been keeping up pretty well with the standard summertime activities :)