A hardcore blogger I am not

Well, I tried the daily blogging, and it burned me out. So, rather than make any promises about how often I'll blog, I'll just say that I'll try to do it twice a week or so, which I think is often enough to keep my wife happy, and not often enough to burn me out so I have to take a sabbatical.

That being said, I'll move on to my actual blog for today.

Yesterday was my daughter's second birthday party. It was a hoot. A lot of work, but still fun. We had 32 people total, including ourselves, with 11 children under the age of 6. I'm sure my wife will correct those numbers, but I think they're close. Maybe she'll humor me ;)

Anyway, we tried to keep it simple - it was a Curious George theme, which seemed to go over well. I went to Costco and bought a thousand bananas and used them as weights to hold all the balloons. Ok, maybe not a thousand, but any more than 4 bananas might as well be a thousand to someone who hates bananas. My sister apparently didn't get the theme, because she couldn't figure out why we were using bananas to weigh the balloons down. In the end, she just decided we must have just had too many bananas and they were convenient.

We barbecued, which worked great. Hamburgers, and my soon to be infamous teriyaki chicken. I can't really take credit for the teriyaki chicken yet, the sauce is a recipe I stole from Canlis, which, if you're going to steal a recipe from anywhere, steal one from Canlis. They know what they're doing.

The weather cooperated, which meant that the somewhat-less-than-a-dozen kids were able to burn off their energy outside, which I think was appreciated by everyone over 4 feet tall. After lunch, we brought the presents outside. Now, my daughter appreciates presents mostly because she knows they lead to cake. So, it was a constant struggle to keep her involved in the present opening. Fortunately, there were approximately 10 other children there who were more than happy to help open presents. Below is a shot of my daughter receiving a helping hand from her cousin:

Eventually, it became more of a group effort...

The wind started to blow, and the tissue paper was everywhere. With every new toy, my daughter's arms would wave: "Other toys! Yay!"

We decided to move inside for cake and ice cream. This proved to be a big mistake, as I think leaving the presents outside was just too traumatic. My daughter began to cry and whine.

Cake makes everything better.

A mouthful of cake makes an excellent cry muffler. See? No cries escaping that mouth. Of course there are now chocolate crumbs all over my house, but that just means the house smells like chocolate.

So far, my daughter has spent time playing with pretty much all the toys she received, but she has of course latched onto a few key ones. The first is a cool drawing book from Aunt G and Uncle B. It's a handmade fabric covered folder that holds a drawing pad and several erasable crayons. I was worried yesterday when my daughter disappeared into her bedroom for several minutes without making any noise, and when I went into her room, she was sitting quietly in her rocking chair, drawing in her new book.

The other favorite has been the doll sized baby stroller. She walks all over our house, pushing the stroller:

It was the first thing she grabbed this morning... she wouldn't eat anything or do anything until she had pushed her stroller all over the house, crashing into the walls, waking her mother up. Yesterday during her nap, I strapped her bunny into it as a joke. Now she won't put anything else in it - we tried to put a doll in, she removed it and put the bunny back.

Also - she "parks" the stroller for the night on top of the toilet in our hallway bathroom. When I took her in to brush her teeth last night, she came down the hall pushing her stroller down the hall, into the bathroom, then she picked it up and set it on the toilet and said "Stoller parked. There."

She's napping now, and I'm watching the Mariners crush the White Sox as I blog. It's a good Sunday.

-The Krunchy Krab