Happy 2nd Birthday Christian!

Today is my favorite little man's birthday. R and I took the day off from work and spent it with Christian, letting him do whatever he wanted (ok, so how is that different from any other day?...ha ha).

In the morning, Cman woke up and found a big ol' present on his bed. I gave him the little monster doll that I had bought him. He liked hugging it, but I refrained from giving him the markers that came with it (you're supposed to doodle stuff on the monster and then it washes right off). I didn't want him to think that he could go around writing on anything and everything in sight.

We spent the morning at home and then in the afternoon we went to Pinecrest Gardens (where the old Parrot Jungle used to be). Cristy had been raving about if for some time now, but I hadn't really gone to see all it had to offer. I'm really glad we finally listened to her because the place was so nice; I'm a fool for not having gone before!

First we walked through this beautiful and lush nature trail. After that we took Chris to a cute splash zone with lots of fountains for kids to splash in (for $3). Once he had his fill of getting wet, we took another lovely stroll through the grounds and ran into many of the iguanas that call that place home. I'd never seen so many of them in one place! The park also had a little playground with tons of slides, a butterfly exhibit (with 1 butterfly that kept trying to get out...I guess he was lonely), and a petting zoo. I was scared that the animals were going to hurt Chris in some way because he kept on running up to them. Two year olds aren't exactly gentle when it comes to approaching or petting animals. They had pot-bellied pigs and goats and some bunnies in some cages. We had a wonderful time and I look forward to going back there again. Of course I took a thousand and one pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet, so I'll update this post with a link to the pictures later. Trust me, there's too many to even do my usual linky dink posts.

After our little outing, we headed to my parents house to cut a (cup)cake and sign Happy Birthday to him. He loved it when we all sang to him and really had fun trying to blow the candle out. It was quite funny because once we stopped singing and the candle was blown out he kept saying "happy happy happy" because he wanted us to sing again. Of course, like the suckers that we are, we would do it all over again. I think we probably sang to him about 8 times before we decided we'd had enough.

I'm happy that he had a wonderful time today, but I'm a little sad because I worry that he's going to miss me for the next 5 days. I leave to California tomorrow at 6am, so I won't get to say bye to my little boy before I leave. This reminds me of how sad I got on the plane when I went to NY last year....

I'll see you guys in a week!