Happy Birthday, Bray Bray!

The only good shot I got of the kid all night. At two years old, you now understand the concept of blowing out a birthday candle, and pretty much get the whole opening presents thing (though you get distracted by your very cool Diego toy and need help getting back into the present opening). You can tell me how old you are with some prompting and you can even sing the first verse of Happy Birthday to You! But you're still incredibly hard to get a photo of. You squirm, and move, and look away just at the right moments for Aunt Sarah's kinda slow shutter speed.. But hey! We still love you. Heck, you even wore the crown I made you throughout most of the night. Only tearing it off occassionaly when you were reminded that you were wearing it.

I'm excited to see what sort of reaction Bray has on Saturday at his birthday party when he sees the present from Mike and I. He saw the box the last time he stayed with us, and went straight for it, so hopefully it'll go over well. It would have been fun to give tonight with fewer people around, but Uncle Mikkkesch (as Bray would say) had to work.

Isn't the first grandchild in the family lucky? He's a novelty and gets so much undivided love from so many people. Bray is even more of a special case because of our circumstance which is now starting to normalize. Lucky kid! And lucky us for having him…though you can totally tell he is 2 now.

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After seeing a few blogging moms making their birthday kids special birthday crowns, I decided to do the same for Bray. It's such a sweet, fun tradition to have. I handstitched this puppy up last night in a couple hours while huddle on the couch watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. I used cheapy felt sheets, what I had on hand. I don't have much of a stash of anything…just a small basket of yarn, a stack of cheapy felt, a cigar box of embroidery floss and a small draw of fabric…so I worked with what I had. No neat buttons to embellish with so I used black felt for the crown, so I make some embellishments with brightly colored felt and floss really pop. It turned out cute. Definitely patchworky and handmade. It could probably fit him another year (used a velcro closure) but I stitched the 2 directly on, so I may just have to send another one to him next year. Though it would be easier for it to work for several years, I thinks its more special to have a new crown each birthday…you know, celebrating currect interests and favorites. We'll see how it works out in the future. A girl can dream big, right?