Happy Birthday little man!

How is it possible that the "baby" of the family is two!?

We would never have imagined the ways in which our little Tate has enhanced our lives. He's smart and might be the best/earliest talker of all of our kids. He's already speaking in complete sentences and even manages to use the correct verb tense some of the time. He's like a little parrot, repeating everything we say. He's charming.  Everywhere we go, people comment on his big brown eyes and long eyelashes he loves to bat. He flirts shamelessly while they fawn over here. He's amazing at entertaining himself and we'll often find him just quietly playing trains in his room, after searching the whole house for him. He thinks his siblings are the funniest things on the planet. I can't get enough of his deep belly laugh. He is madly in love with his sister "Hadeeeee" and lets her lead him along by the hand. He has the sweetest little grumpy furrowed brow when he's not happy about something. He'll grumble "No. I don wike it, kisses" and bat my face away if I'm trying to cheer him up. He really does like them and hugs too. He loves to snuggle and he's a mama's boy, just like his brother. He'll often walk up to me with his arms outstretched "I need mommy hole-jew" (which means mommy hold me). He is such a joy and we can't imagine our lives without him.

It's always a bit of a bummer to have a birthday during the week because everyone's just going about their business instead of celebrating with you. We sent the big kiddos on their way and Tate and I set off on our morning together. We stopped in for a much needed haircut (for him). He flirted with the stylist and admired himself in the mirror. When he was done, we headed to the bakery a few doors down for a treat. We got something to split and when I told them it was his birthday they insisted on bringing a birthday cupcake to our table. His eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw it. "CAKE!!"  I had to help him blow out the candle. He was giggling and squealing and licking icing at the same time and managed to inhale the chocolate wafer off the top. He panicked and started gagging and I ended up doing the hemlich right there at the table. I'm not kidding. Nothing like trying to enjoy a delicious scone while someone horks up their breakfast at the table next to you. Luckily despite having no prior experience doing the heimlick, I'm decent at it. The wafer went flying out, he drank some water, collected himself and went back to eating. This guy loves cake.

We stopped at the store and picked up a couple of balloons for the birthday boy. Another favorite. We picked Hadley up from school, went home and had lunch, played for a bit, then went down for a nap. Hadley and I finished his cake and blew up a bunch of balloons while he was napping. I also dragged the car table upstairs I bought off of a neighbor so everything would be set when we woke. He was excited to see the celebration. We let him open his presents before dinner so he had a bit of time to play. He seemed to like them, but he's still a bit young to understand it all. He stopped halfway through opening and went into the kitchen where Dayven was having a pre-dinner appie and exclaimed "I chips and salsa TOO!" We had to coax him back to finish the presents. We rolled out the cake and candles and he played shy, hiding his face, while we sang. Hadley had to blow them out. He wasn't shy about digging in though. All the excitement had him keyed up and he wasn't ready for bedtime, but fell asleep a few minutes after I put him down. Happy Birthday, my sweet little man!