August 20th was Alex’s second birthday, and the first one we got to spend with her. We got her a Disney Princess kitchen set. For reasons I won’t go into here, we began assembling it at 12:30 Saturday morning. We finished at 2:30 Saturday morning. (Give us a break, we’ve only been through one Christmas and one birthday–save your toy assembly horror stores for another time, OK?)

Alex woke us up at 7:30 singing “Happy Birthday” to herself. Fortunately, she only knows the first two words, so it was a short serenade.

She loved the party. I’m not sure she completely understood why we had assembled an audience for her, but she put on quite a show. She demonstrated “SUMO!”, “YMCA,” and spontaneously counted to 10.

Her Ariel cake was a big hit, but opening presents was the high point.

She didn’t want the party to end. Although all the guests had left, at 9:00 pm she was still going strong.

After a good night’s sleep, she was still in a party mood, and insisted on wearing a party hat to eat breakfast. Someday, we need to explain that birthdays last only one day. For right now, we’ll just let her enjoy it.