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Monday, October 22, 2007

Birthday Post #3

No birthday is complete without a black eye and some vomit.

Well, to be fair, the black-eye-inducing injury took place a couple of days before the actual birthday (eye vs. coffee table, ouch!), but it was in its full multicolored glory for the birthday festivities.

As for the vomit, Carlos has thrown up twice in the last few days just from coughing too hard. Poor baby!

Anyhoo - here are some more pictures from the birthday weekend. I promise I'll get back to posting jewelry stuff soon. :-)

I think Carlos' favorite element of the entire birthday experience was the balloons...

...especially this Diego balloon, which I didn't get a very good shot of. (Otis looks pretty interested too, doesn't he?)

He also really loved it when the waitresses at his favorite Japanese restaurant came and sang 'Happy Birthday' to him.

One of the highlights for me this weekend was discovering some jeans that actually fit him. How cute are these???

Here's a close-up of the black eye (it's more colorful in real life).

I was also really impressed with all of our friends' and families' restraint when it came to gift giving. All of Carlos' grandparents (understandably) get a big kick out of spoiling him, but a couple of months ago, Matt and I attempted to gently set some ground rules for gift giving to try to help keep the crazy accumulation of toys in check, and to hopefully begin to teach Carlos the true meaning of holidays and gratitude, and lessen our environmental footprint all at the same time. Carlos' party invitations listed a couple of charities that people could donate to instead of bringing gifts, and many did just that - I was so pleased!

Everyone did a great job of coming up with creative, non-traditional gifts that were easier on the planet (and our small house!) than the usual crush of plastic, battery-operated toys. In addition to lots of donations, Carlos got some savings bonds, money for college, art supplies, books, fruit (truly his favorite thing), a pumpkin with markers to color it with, and the cutest second-hand shirt. It felt good to see the people we care about respecting and even appreciating what we were trying to do.

I imagine this kind of thing will be harder as he gets older, but at least at age two, he's 100% satisfied with some oranges and a handful of balloons.

4 comments:

Kirsten said...

Happy Birthday to him! The little ones are so often happy with birthday presents that they can create with or eat. Art supplies are often a big hit.

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday Tamara! I hope you have a wonderful day today. We love you very much! And it was fun celebrating this past weekend with Carlos and his family and friends. The look on his face when when we sang to him in the Japanese restaurant was so adorable and not easily forgotten.

Mamacita said...

So cute...even with a black eye. We gave our coffee table away when Sugarlips was about 13 months old because we couldn't stand the bumps and subsequent screaming any more! We've never replaced in and remain coffee table free. Maybe we should buy some of those square foot stools that are padded all the way around.

Vegan_Noodle said...

How cool about the gifts for Carlos's birthday.....I think that is so wonderful.