DJ's 2nd Birthday party

Yesterday, Steve and I threw a birthday party for DJ's 2nd birthday. The usual suspects were present (the grandparents, the Schrammies, Marty, the Doyles and Andy Leeds) plus some new ones! DJ's buddy from daycare, Grace, and her family came to celebrate with us! Yaay! She was in an adorable little pink dress with layers of ruffles, white tights, and patent leather shoes. She was adorable! What was hilarious was that DJ and Grace didn't even acknowledge each other for the first hour, as if they didn't recognize each other outside of daycare. Eventually, they figured it out. ;-) And baby Evan effectively slept through the whole party in Daddy's arms. I tried to give them a break by offering to take Evan for awhile, but Daddy bogarted the baby. Foiled again! LOL

DJ spent most of his party going up and down the deck stairs (like a big boy!), snatching Wheat Thins off the plate, swinging on his swing, and running around outside. He finally saw the presents in the living room, and promptly decided that they needed to be ripped open. Grace wanted to help, especially when she saw Thomas The Train stuff to be had! When DJ would open a gift of clothes, he'd scrunch up the tissue paper and fling the clothes behind him. If the gift was a toy, he'd want us to open it on the spot for him. How do they know at age 2?? Wow.

DJ got some cool presents, like the toddler-sized picnic table that Marty made for DJ, cardboard blocks that he loves to play with from Leo, and activity books from Grace. He also got lots of necessary clothes from various people as he's outgrown everything from last summer already!

We sang Happy Birthday for DJ and he got another handful of cake in the process of blowing out the candles. Once his hand got dirty, he didn't know what to do. So I put his fingers in his mouth which, at first, he didn't want to do, but then realized that it tasted good. We washed his hands and he had some cake. It wasn't long thereafter that he went down for a nap... he was beat!

Elektra was being passed around between the grandparents and my sister. At one point, Elektra got ahold of Papou's thumb and was chomping on it because clearly, someone else's thumb tastes better than her own... She also barely napped, as our little Social Bug insisted on being in the middle of all the racket at all times. She was wiped out by the end of the day!

It was a long day (got up at 6:30 to start cooking!), but it was worth it. DJ seemed to have a good time overall, except when Napoleon stole the cracker DJ was eating. To be fair, DJ dropped it, but DJ doesn't know the difference. We also broke a drawer in the kitchen and dog poop was tracked in the house from outside, but oh well. It was fun to have everyone over on such a nice day!