It's Birthday Time!

Eliza had such a good time yesterday. She had no idea what a birthday party entailed, other than the bits of information obtained from the Yo Gabba Gabba "Birthday" episode.

First, we made a cake. She loved cracking the eggs with Nathan and stirring the batter. She didn't like the texture of the dry cake mix.

(Please note she is wearing her Elmo pajama top in the middle of the afternoon. She refused to take it off and cried when Nathan attempted to make her change. It's pretty cute that she loves Elmo so much.)

She was fascinated with the "2" birthday candle and tried chewing on it/eating it before it was cake time. We had to put it into a safe place before placing it on the cake.

One of my friends made an "E" cake for her daughter, whose name also starts with the letter "E." It was a simple, cute idea, and Eliza loves letters. We made a few measurements and voila! We had an "E" cake. Sadly, we ran out of icing. Please don't judge the bare edges of the cake.

Eliza opened her presents before we cut the cake. She was fascinated with the wrapping paper and couldn't bring herself to rip it.

 After some coaxing, she began to peel back the paper.

She then saw there was a wooden toy inside and the outline of blocks. She was so excited!

However, she wasn't too sure if it was hers. We let her know it was a present for her, and she began playing with her new toy. She wasn't too interested in doing much else, so we just let her play with her wooden blocks for a while.

Finally, we got to the fun part! Nathan took a couple of pictures as Eliza sat down with her cake, and I grabbed the video recorder. I thought Eliza would love us singing to her and blowing out her candle.

I was wrong.

She was fine until we lit the candle, but as soon as she saw the tiny flame, she was terrified for some reason. She stepped away from the cake and just stared.

She then ran away from the cake, saying "fire!" Nathan finally convinced her to go back to the cake and showed her how to blow out the candle. After daddy did it, she was fine sitting in the chair and blowing out the tiny "fire."

It took her several attempts, but she finally blew out the candle on her cake. She was so proud of herself! She insisted that we light the candle a couple of more times. Each time, she was so excited to blow out the flame.

As it turns out, the best part about being 2 is having a candle to blow out. She didn't care about the eating the cake.

Happy Birthday, Eliza!