Happy Birthday to Zoë!

My plans for the afternoon involved fixing the blinds in Miriam and Benjamin's room, wrapping presents, squeezing in a quick nap, and then spending some joyful after school hours letting the kids help me finish decorating Zoë's birthday cake—a beautiful ocean scened, Moana-themed cake. 

Instead what I ended up doing was tipping the stool over as I was trying to fix the blinds and ramming my toe somewhere on the way down, ripping my toenail almost off (but not quite) and then spending the next four hours at the InstaCare waiting doctor rip it the rest of the way off because neither Andrew or I could stomach doing it at home.

I didn't fix the blinds, wrap presents, take a nap, or finish decorating the cake.

When I finally got home (around 5:00), the kids and I set to work moulding ocean critters out of fondant while Andrew (my hero, who drove home from campus to take care of me...missing a meeting with his advisor even) made enchiladas for dinner. 

The kids all had a lot of fun playing with (and eating) the fondant. Needless to say, the cake didn't end up quite as pristine as I was hoping but, under the circumstances, I'd say it turned out wonderfully. And we had a good time together, which is really the most important thing. We based our cake off this one; here's our finished product:

And a few shots of the backside:

Miriam was pretty proud of this seahorse:

Zoë was rather happy about her cake even before she knew it was a Moana cake (she loves water and fish).

Here she is saying, "My Mo-na-na!"

She tried blowing out the candles even before we lit them. I wasn't sure she'd know what to do because we haven't celebrated any birthdays around here since October and that's a long time in baby years. But apparently she remembered exactly how birthdays work.

Here she is looking at the candles:

And a blurry picture of her blowing them out:

Here's everyone (but me) snuggling up to the birthday girl:

And here she is enjoying yelling, "Happy!" She really liked the ice cream and fondant (and enjoyed smashing the cake).

After a dinner of enchiladas followed by cake and ice cream, followed by being left sitting in her high chair so long that she peed her pants (oops—Mommy was wrapping presents and Daddy was cleaning up the kitchen and we momentarily forgot that we'd left her strapped in), Zoë needed a quick bath. Here she is, all giggles, after her bath.

Once she had some undies on Zoë settled in on our white couch for the last time (someone came to get it just a few minutes after we finished opening presents—thanks, Craigslist) to open her gifts.

Here she is opening a "gook" that Miriam got for her (at the school book exchange):

She can say "bye" and "baby" and "ball" and "baa" and a zillion other b-words, but if there's any sort of guttural sound in the word, her /b/ changes to a /g/. So book is gook. Silly girl.

And here she is opening a Fancy Nancy gook from Grandma and Grandpa:

We had to check to see if Naanii and Grandma had sent the same card for Zoë (not that that has ever happened (twice, once to Rachel and once to Miriam)), but they didn't! Naanii and Bumpa sent a personalized card for our little Z'ogre.

It says, "Happy Birthday to our favorite little Zoë-gre!" and has a picture of an ogre on it. She loved it!

Here she is opening the dress Naanii sent. Sometimes it pays to open your presents half-naked.

It makes trying on new outfits very easy!

She also got a little toy farm, which she's thrilled about. 

Thanks to everyone for helping Zoë have a happy second birthday!