Daniel turns 2

Daniel's birthday was a lot of fun.  We did and had a bunch of his favorite things starting with bagels for breakfast.  It's the only food I can guarantee he will always eat. Our whole family loves fondue.  I mean really, melted cheese?  Yes, please!  It's no surprise that we had that for dinner.  You can see from the pictures how excited he is about the fondue and his kool-aids he got.  I made a Cars ice cream cake and let me tell you, that thing was delicious! It was a chocolate cake with caramel cheesecake ice cream, moose tracks ice cream, and milk chocolate ganache.  Awesome! He loves so many different things right now that it makes it easy.  He's recently become obsessed with Angry Birds, though when he plays the game he always launches the birds backwards. :) For his birthday he got three of the birds that were talking stuffed animals.  Then we made a slingshot and created a real life game for him.  We could have played with the birds all day. We also fed the ducks at Flowserve, which is crazy with fish and now a pelican is there too.  The fish go crazy for bread like piranhas.  Then the pelican ate one of these giant fish (easily 2 ft. long).  I swear I thought the pelican would choke, but he got it down.  The best part is Spencer got it all on video. :) We had a great time just being together.

Now for Daniel's stats.  He's 22 lbs and 30.5 in.  Both basically put him between 0-1% for his age, but he is proportionate so the doctor's not worried about him at all. Here are some things about him at 2:

• talks in 3 word phrases
• says too many words for me to count or write down here
• throws a ball way too accurately (my face gets hit a lot)
• loves to help clean
• moved into a bunk bed with Lizzie at about 23 months
• knows nearly all of his colors, sometimes mixes up ones that are close like shades of pink and purple
• counts to 3 (that I can tell for sure)
• favorite book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear
• goes insane for animals, especially goats for some reason
• loves condiments - When he doesn't have food he'll just use his fingers to eat the ranch.
• When he gets mad, which is often, he blows raspberries at you and yells.  Apparently he thinks this is absolutely the worst thing he could do to you, makes it hard to discipline him when you ultimately want to just laugh.
• He could jump all day on the trampoline.
• loves sugar in all forms
• could throw rocks all day
• would rather sit in the dirt than hike
• loves video games already even though he rarely gets to play them
• could swing all day at the park
• head bangs to the drum part in Choose the Right