We celebrated our youngest son’s second birthday this past week. You know how time seems to move quickly when you become a parent? When you have a second child I think it moves about four times faster! I feel like it’s only been a short time since we were riding home with him in the car and then suddenly we woke up to him being two years old. It’s like a whirlwind some days in this thing called parenthood, but I know we can honestly say we have loved every moment. It’s truly a joy to be a mom and dad and we loved celebrating with our boys and friends on this special day.

The morning started out with us singing Happy Birthday to a sleepy Aleksandr, followed by “paaan-kiks!!” (pancakes) for breakfast. It’s sure to be a good day when it starts off with pancakes right? 

We made the drive to Atlanta to meet up with a friend and her three boys at Zoo Atlanta. The boys were so excited to see all the animals and spend some time with friends. We ate lunch and rode the carousel—a favorite for all of us…who doesn’t love the carousel?!—and we ended the trip by letting the boys jump in a splash pad. And naturally we took the opportunity to get our own feet wet too. It was a fun-filled morning and I enjoyed seeing the animals as much as the boys!

On the way back home we stopped to pick up balloons. We’ve started this as a birthday tradition about 2 or 3 years ago. We take the boys to pick out their balloon of choice. Aleksandr was pretty bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed after having fallen asleep on the drive from the zoo, but he perked up enough to make his selection—a Thomas the Train balloon. Oliver chose an orange balloon which unfortunately popped about 2 minutes down the road in the car, thanks to a little too much excitement and rough handling. That was loud. And sad for Oliver!

We finished our evening celebrating with our good friends over dinner and homemade cake. It was a successful cake! Not always the case when you make it from scratch, but I made this one from one of my favorite food sites, Smitten Kitchen, and topped it with a buttercream frosting. 

It’s a little hard to believe we’ve now entered the twos yet again, but Day 1 was wonderfully busy and fun!