For Nathan’s 2nd birthday we threw him a robot-themed birthday party.  He absolutely loved it!  Would it surprise anyone to know that robot party supplies and favors are not readily available?  It surprised me.  I had to order the plates, napkins and decorations online, which wasn’t a big deal but we had to get creative when it came to invitations and signs.  Good thing there’s an artist in the family!

Balloon

Jeremy designed an awesome invitation, which we emailed out to everyone to stick with the robot theme.

Of course, Jeremy designed a birthday shirt again this year.  I don’t have a really good picture of it, but you can get the idea from the photo below.  Hopefully Jeremy was able to catch a glimpse of it on video.

We ordered the cake from Hy-Vee again this year and she did a fantastic job once again.  I took them one of the napkins I ordered for a reference and this is what she created.

When it came time to sing “Happy Birthday,” Nathan decided to play shy again.  If you look closely on the chair, you can see his little booty sticking up in the air.

He wanted mommy to help him blow out the candles.

We were very lucky to have most of the family in from Iowa and Oklahoma to celebrate, along with some good friends.

Nathan was very thankful to receive some wonderful presents.  Among them were a Spiderman scooter and helmet from mommy and daddy, an art easel, a t-ball set, tool bench, some great fun shirts and socks, an AquaDoodle, a remote control truck, play-doh and tickets to see Sesame Street Live in a couple weeks.  He loves all of the gifts and will have a lot of fun playing with them.  Good thing he had a lot of help unwrapping everything. 

Nathan decided he needed to ride his scooter immediately after he opened it.  Here is the inaugural run, with Papa’s assistance.

We eventually had to put it away because it became a source of contention and caused a lot of fighting between the older kids.

Brandon helped Grandpa put the tool bench together.

Stay tuned for video, once Jeremy has time to edit everything.

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes, cards and gifts.  Nathan is truly blessed to have such wonderful, thoughtful people in his life.  Now I’m praying that we can get through this year with a minimal amount of temper tantrums and other such 2-year-old issues.  Here’s hoping!

I’m a few days late putting up a birthday post, but I had a house full of guests and a party to plan.  I wanted to let everyone know that we haven’t forgotten about you and will (hopefully) be posting some new pictures soon.  We have quite a backlog from Christmas, adventures in the snow and the robot-tastic birthday party yesterday.

Sorry to everyone who checks the website on a regular basis.  One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be a better blogger, but 17 days into the new year is quickly showing that I’m failing at that miserably.  I promise to post pics soon!  In the meantime, we’ll go way back for some oldies, but goodies. 

January 2008

January 2009

Last night we were having our nightly bedtime routine of enjoying an episode of “Zula Patrol” on mom and dad’s bed before turning in. Nathan was acting overly silly, which usually signals super-tiredness which equals immediate bedtime.

We shut the TV off early and were preparing to take him to bed when he decided to crawl around and get super-duper silly, which was cute but unfortunately led to him losing his balance and hitting his head on the footboard of the bed as he fell off. Robin picked him up and as he cried I came around to see if he was going to have a goose egg. Instead I saw blood. Oh boy.

The impact split his eyebrow open about 1/8-1/4″. Robin’s estimate was 1 1/2″. Anxiety will do that to you.

I got a Q-Tip and cleaned away the blood and as I got a good look at the wound, I immediately thought, “Oh shit, this is going to need stitches.” Even though the gash looked a little wide/deep, it stopped bleeding very quickly and he was back to trying to play guitar within minutes of the fall. He’s one tough dude. This was also encouraging to me because it meant the cut wasn’t as bad as I may have originally thought.  Still, if it needed stitches, we needed to get going.

We called up nurse Aunt Angela for some quick advice before heading to Childrens’ Urgent Care clinic, and as luck would have it, she had some Dermabond at the house, which is what she said the doctor would use on him at the clinic anyway.

So, we drove him over to Angela’s house instead for an impromptu head gluing on the living room floor.  On the way there, I tried to think of what kinds of tests I could give him to see if he had gotten a concussion. Since I couldn’t ask him who was president last year, I instead asked him what sounds cows and pigs made. A couple of moos and snorts later, I figured he was good in that respect.

He was awesome and didn’t even flinch for Aunt Angela. After we came home, Nathan and mommy laid back down in bed to start the nighty-night ritual all over again while I went downstairs to start cleaning up my basement office. When I came up at 1:00 am, Nathan was still in bed, so I took him into his room. In the dark, I misjudged where I was and hit Nathan’s head ON THE OTHER SIDE against the crib railing. Luckily it wasn’t hard enough to do damage or even wake him up for more than 10 seconds, but still… I am an awesome dad. Jeez.

The photo above was taken this morning. The cut looks pretty good and the swelling/bruising is far less than I anticipated.  I had expected him to wake up looking like he lost a boxing match. Luckily, that’s not the case.

Nathan and Daddy are now going to have matching eyebrow scars. Mine is from hitting my head on the monkey rings on a playground. i was a sophomore in college when it happened. It’s a long story.