{pretty, happy, funny, real} – birthday fun!

Still playing catch up on the pictures here… I have pictures from this week but they’re still on the camera and I’ve got all of August’s pictures to process first! Hopefully I’ll be up-to-date for next week 🙂

{pretty}

For Rondel’s second birthday back in July we visited the zoo! And our zoo, being in a hot desert environment, obligingly has a spashpad where the kids can cool down. Limerick was a huge fan.

{happy}

This baby is seriously in love with water play – here he’s enjoying one of the Rondel’s birthday presents.

And here’s Rondel himself enjoying the water! He’s a bit more cautious than his brother but once he gets past his initial reluctance he has a lot of fun.

{funny}

I don’t actually have any pictures of him looking happy while opening presents, even the Hotwheels Mustangs from Grandpa – he was just so utterly serious about the whole process! It’s really neat how important every little thing is to toddlers, and how all the experiences we are so familiar with are brand new and somewhat exciting, challenging, and frightening all at once to them, because of course they haven’t lived through it all before.

{real}

My sister got Rondel these peas and we made the mistake of letting him open the afore-mentioned Mustangs first… he had eyes for no other gifts once he saw those cars! Limerick, however, decided that the peas could be for him instead, if no one else wanted them, and immediately attacked them with great delight.

It’s very nice, you know, how little kids don’t hold you to some standard of perfection as their parent – they just ask for your love and attention. They don’t really care about the presents, or about how beautiful the cake was (creatively imagined but only somewhat successfully executed, if you want to know), or about how many people are there celebrating them. I’m sure their desires and expectations will grow with them, but so will my understanding of them and my relationship with them, and it is this knowledge that we’ll be growing together that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed about all the parenting milestones ahead of me.

So happy 2nd birthday Rondel! Here’s to many more years of love and laughter together.

(Go check out the other {p,h,f,r} posts through the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter!)