Two years old

Kid number one is now two years old. Hurray!! We have officially entered the Terrible Twos. It's odd, but I could have sworn that we'd been there for a while. Still, Margaret and I did have a nice evening uploading pictures on the web as she stayed up late for her birthday.

As befits the distinguished status of kid number one, we have experienced six days of celebration of her birthday. It all began on Saturday when Grandma Mary, Grandpa Dave and the Philly relatives (Lizzie! Andwu! Alex!) arrived. We hit the Mall for the National Kite Festival, which was quite a scene. The National Kite Festival is one of those events where the weather always seems to be nice (i.e., not raining and reasonably breezy as needed for kites) and everyone seems to be in a good mood. How do you keep your kite from getting tangled with someone else's kite? I don't know, but no worries since no one seems to get too worked up when lines do get tangled. Initially, Alex, Andrew and I tried to fly our kite with limited success (BTW, I could've gotten the kite up, but the kids didn't seem to grasp the physics behind kite flying.) We then watched a "professional" kite-flying display which was basically a battle royale with a bunch of kites up in the air banging into one another. The last one up after all sorts of intentional collisions won the round. A very odd scene, especially since you tended to watch the kites in the sky, but most of the action took place on the ground as the teams ran all over the place maneuvering for position.

Eventually, some of us got bored with that event, so we wandered off and, due to a series of serendipitous gusts of wind, managed to get our kite way up in the air. Lizzie and I flew the kite for a while until the wind dropped off. We all then wandered around the Mall for a few hours hitting all of the sights that Abby and I take for granted. "Oh yeah. That's the new World War II Memorial. Would you like to see it? The quotes in the Lincoln Memorial? They're kind of boring." Yawn. At least for us, but not, we had to remember, for everyone else.

On Sunday, we had an early birthday party for Margaret. As was the case on her first birthday, Margaret found the cake a bit disturbing, but unlike last time, she managed to get over it and ended up stuffing her face.

After the Philly relatives left, we opened presents. And boy did Margaret make out like a champ. A mini-kitchen ("It's hot," she says seriously, mimicking her Papa, as she puts something in the oven), a bunch of horses for her little barn, and a lot of books. As befits her maternal gene pool, she reveled in the whole process of opening and basking in the glow of her presents.

Margaret and the boy then spent the next three days at home with Grandma Mary and Grandpa Dave. Such fun. For all parties involved. Margaret seemed to be in an unusually good mood each morning from the time she woke up. And I didn't have to scramble from work to pick them up from daycare. Sure the ladies at daycare harangued me about their absence when I stopped by to tell them where the kids were, but I have to say that the presence of grandparents, either my parents or Abby's parents on earlier visits, is a godsend for our quality of life. The kids seemed to enjoy having the grandparents around too.

Today was the OFFICIAL birthday. We had a little party at daycare with the same cupcakes (sans frosting which the caretakers love since it keeps the mess to a minimum) that we used last year. Rather than saying "Happy Birthday, Elessar" (directed to one of the kids in her class), Margaret has now started saying "Happy Birthday, Margaret." I've pointed out to her that she needs to work on her pronouns since only celebrities and eccentric people refer to themselves in the third person, but she doesn't seem to get it. In any case, we had a nice party at school. AND BEST OF ALL, Teddy, Margaret, Maddie and I are enjoying some bonding time since Mama is out of town leaving Papa to deal with the kids. Which brings back memories of previous episodes in which Mama has deserted Papa and the kids. At the end of the day, we all survive, but it's not pleasant.

Last night, for example, Teddie woke up at 1:00 AM. After giving him a bottle, he continued to fuss, so I brought him into bed with me and kept sticking a pacificer and/or bottle into his mouth whenever he woke up. Which seemed, to me, to be about every 30 minutes or so. Not fun. When I mentioned this experience at work, one of my research assistants asked "But doesn't your wife have to deal with that every night when she's home?" Harumph.

Here, then, are some pics illustrating various things that I've written about in this post. Note that in some of the pictures, Margaret has a pony tail. A new development about which I'll opine in detail at a future date.