Miriam's Two!

Miriam's birthday celebrations started bright and early this morning. Rachel was easily 10 times more excited for Miriam's birthday than Miriam was and insisted that they run out to the kitchen to see the decorations right away—Grandma has a number of birthday banners that she's put up for every birthday for years and years. She put them up last night so the girls were not disappointed when they raced into the kitchen at full speed to make sure Miriam's birthday had not been overlooked. 

"But where's her crown?" Rachel asked, "Grandma put a birthday crown out for me on my birthday!"

All things being equal...that's my Rachel.

While Miriam munched on her cereal, Rachel serenaded her with the Happy Birthday song. Then I left Miriam with Grandma while I ran Rachel to school. When I got home, Miriam and I got to work on decorating her birthday cake.

Because Miriam was helping so much—mostly by tasting the icing—she was nearly naked and covered in icing. She was still that way when Grandpa Frank and Grandma Sharon stopped by. I just rinsed her off and let her visit in her undies. Word on the street was that Grandma Sharon had picked out an outfit for Miriam to wear, anyway, but the first thing Miriam unwrapped was a teddy bear.

The next package had the outfits—one of which was a pink dress, which Miriam instantly fell in love with. First she announced she was getting ready for church then changed her mind and decided she was actually going to a ball. 

She wore it for the rest of the day—most of which was relatively normal. Asher came over to play and then little Emily and then everyone went home and Rachel and Miriam played and fought and then my family came over for dinner. After dinner we opened presents. Auntie Josie wanted to watch Miriam open presents before she had to leave for mutual.

My family got Miriam a new magna-doodle type toy. We had a little green and yellow one when Rachel was really little. It went to Cairo with us and even came home with us. By the time we came home the girls were fighting over it a lot. So we got another one for someone's birthday—either Rachel's or Miriam's, I can't remember whose—this time it was a larger red and yellow one. Shortly after we got the second one we lost the first one. That was a major bummer. 

Since then we've been fighting over the red and yellow magna-doodle (or "sketch pad" as we call it since it isn't a magna-doodle brand) in the car and in sacrament meeting. 

We're more than happy to have a second one come into our home! 

Miriam also got some princess dominos, a set of penguins from Grandma and Grandpa, a whiteboard and markers, some Elmo books, and some other odds and ends. She was in heaven opening all the packages and the girls had fun playing with the new toys.

After presents we had cake. This year I made a pumpkin cake for Miriam. It's so hard to know what to do for her because her birthday is so close to Halloween and there are so many fun Halloween cakes but I don't know if she'll like having a Halloween birthday. Grandma's birthday is on Valentine's Day and she said it never bothered her that her birthday fell on a holiday. And my friend Margaret's birthday is on Halloween and she loves it. But both Naanii and Bumpa's birthdays fall shortly before Christmas and they never liked that as children.

I figured a pumpkin cake was pretty safe. Miriam couldn't tell me what kind of cake she wanted—a spider cake, a princess cake, a Star Wars cake, a dog cake, a castle cake, a grass cake, a fence cake. Mostly whenever I asked her what she wanted she would answer with whatever she was looking at right then. But she does love pumpkins right now—Grandpa Reid took her and Rachel to a pumpkin patch on Saturday and let them each choose a little gourd to take home. Miriam's been calling hers a baby pumpkin and has even been sleeping with it (don't worry; it's fresh so there's no mould issue). And I figure if she ever complains about her birthday being combined with a Halloween celebration I can say that this pumpkin cake wasn't a Halloween cake. 

It was a Cinderella cake...pre-fairy-godmother.

Miriam was happy with her cake today so I guess her future feelings don't matter. I just worry about things too much.

She was pretty timid about blowing the candles out her first try but got them both out on her second try.

How I love my precious little two-year-old!