Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Today Julian is 2.
If you're up for it, please leave him a birthday wish by clicking 'comments' below- I'm going to keep it for him!




Julian's birthday will forever be both happy and sad for me (and probably for him as well.) I think of his birth mother and how difficult this day must be. So today I wish her so much love and strength. I wish I could tell her how amazing a child her son is...maybe some day.

Everyone is asking how we're celebrating. Well, we're keeping it low key. His friends sang Happy Birthday at the park yesterday and this morning we let him eat as many eggs with spinach and tomato as he wanted. He actually ate so much he told us he had a tummy ache. His belly was so big it popped out of his jammies.

He got a balloon, a dump truck and a few books. Bike to come next week as a gift from BB and BaBa. He's going to go ape-shit (Julian, not BaBa.)

Always the ham.



We have a house guest- the daughter of my sister's best friend from CT. It's been super fun to have her here and she even made scratch spelt challah for us on shabbat along with chicken and green beans. Now that is a good guest.



My only new news is that this afternoon we go to Henry's birthday party and then start interviewing new day care providers as our fabulous, perfect, bilingual in home day care we've had J in for 4 months is closing. I'm super bummed about this...but should have seen it coming.

Here are some fresh photos.

Rachel and Julian mapping a route.


Birthday book- trucks and diggers, of course.


Smoothie.


My bad.


Came home from work to this cuteness this week.


The last popsicle of summer.


This photo reminds me of a bar in a Western gettin' ready to draw.

Reptile Man.

So I'm finally recovered from vacation. Got home to a week of exhaustion that I haven't felt since before I had my surgery. From now on, no vacation. What? You heard me, no vacation. Anyone that loves me can come here and I'm happy to pitch in for plane, train and bus tickets. I'm happy to take a week off. But if y'all want to see the Julian it's either here or Jon's going alone- until Julian is 3.

This weekend our adoption agency had their annual "reunion" the name of which is a bit confusing to me as I don't know anyone but the staff. Nevertheless we loaded up the car and drove to east crack of nowhere to a suburban play park just in time to see the hired entertainment. "Reptile man" unloaded his crates of snakes, snapping turtles, lizards etc. Oh joy. Julian had had enough within about 8 minutes. And tell me, really, wouldn't you expect "reptile man" to be a guy with scales tattooed all over his body, a slit in his tongue and some weird creepy contact lenses? Reptile keeper maybe. Reptile man? I think not.

Then home for a nap and straight to a bbq when J got up. One woman was talking about her 3 year old daughter sitting in the tub scooched up to the faucet. When the mom went to turn the water off the girl said "NO mommy, I'm washing my vagina!" At which point another mom pops out with "Wow, I didn't figure that out until I was 30!" I'm still cracking up.

Julian is recovering from another upper respiratory tract infection and a bout of asthma. Another round of steroids and his nebulizer every 4-6 hours. He is such a trooper. (BTW just looked it up and apparently you can use trooper or trouper. Who knew?!) Anyway...he's feeling much better now. The roughest part is that the meds turn him into a frantic ranting raving running jumping spinning twirling lunatic. Getting him down is virtually impossible until he just collapses. I imagine it is like when you have that one last shot of espresso even though you know you shouldn't and they 'oops' make it a quadruple.



It doesn't keep him from wanting to snuggle with mama during milk time though, thank goodness.





Here are a few shots Sharon took at the mountain last week. She calls the first one "Sleeping Boy with Brocolli."







xo
-s