Jonathan's 2nd Birthday

I have a tradition with the kids' birthdays to let them help me make the cake batter--and then they get to lick out the bowl. This has been a fun thing to do with them and we usually make it a day or two ahead so that it is cool and ready for decorating the following day.

Here we are putting the cake mix into the bowl.

And then cracking the eggs.

And tasting the finished product! Yeah!

I think our cake making was a success--see how happy he is!

The following day I had to come up with what was going to go on the cake--I usually do a character or something they love. Well right now, Jonathan loves He-Man--yes that outdated show from the early 1980's. We have several He-Man toys as well that he just loves to play with--I think much inspired by a very fun father, who also loves to play with the toys with the kids. So we got on-line and looked up some images for He-Man. Well, I did the best I could at making it similar to the image--definitely not perfect, but not too shabby, and especially for a 2 year old. He loved it!!Jonathan is watching and playing with He-man as he watches the cake being decorated--and Aubrey is also there by him pointing out the things on the cake that really aren't like He-Man--his hair is more orange, his skin is more brown, the wrist bands are too big, etc.

For those of you who don't know, when He-Man pulls out his sword and then holds it like this, there is white light all around him as he gains his He-Man powers.

Jonathan, what can I say--adorable! We actually took the cake to our family Sunday fast dinner so that cousins and family could all enjoy it rather than coming out to our house the following day--making it easier on people. Well, Jonathan didn't really understand that it wasn't his birthday yet, but we were doing the cake and we would do presents the following day. Infact that night he was quite sober and we said, "tomorrow is your real birthday and you will get balloons and presents". His face lit right up and he was VERY excited. Poor kid, I think he thought he just didn't get any presents.

He blew out his candles very well! He loved hearing everyone singing to him!

Another tradition I have is to let the birthday child pick whatever part of the cake they want--Jonathan got the whole sword! Some of the other kids were quite jealous about this, but hey, it's his cake!

We have another tradition that the birthday child gets to open one or two things in the morning that they can play with throughout the day, then we open the rest that evening after dinner. Jonathan is opening his morning gift. We also put candy or small toys inside of balloons and they get to pop the balloons to get the prize. The girls have always been too scared to pop the balloons. Jonathan was another story! He loved trying to pop the balloons and after his many attempts of jumping on and hitting and sitting on balloons with no success, Aubrey gave him a tack. With delight, he popped those balloons, not even flinching--Mariah stood far away and covered her ears!
Later that day, Jonathan was sitting up at the counter looking at the remnants of his He-man birthday cake. He looked up at me very sadly and asked, "where's He-man?" I reminded him that we sang to him and we all ate the cake. I asked him, "did you eat He-man's sword?". He sadly nodded his head and said, "yes." It was adorable!! I told him that it was alright to eat the He-man cake.
Here is Jonathan playing with one of his presents.

Here is Jonathan wanting to see the camera rather than posing for it--he got the foam sword for his birthday and tring to be like He-man, he tucked it in his sweater on his back--what a funny boy!

And finally, since we already did his cake and candles, we made some brownies and sang and blew out candles again! He had a blast! Especially with his birthday extended so much!