Otto Is Two

Otto turned Two on January 15th!

Otto, over the past year you've gone from being a baby just learning to walk to a big kid that runs and runs and runs. You've also gone from being "just" the little brother to becoming our family's "big little brother." Sometimes you love being the little brother and are willing to follow Max's lead, while other times you most adamantly won't!

You are your father's son. So focused and intent on figuring everything out. There is no such word as 'tinker' in either of your vocabularies. Absolutely not. You both have well thought out plans and are always on a mission to accomplish something. Like a surgeon has a playlist for their surgeries, so do you. Much of the time you are humming a song and babbling as you work. You can get entirely lost in what you're doing, and it's these times that I think I can literally see the tiny gears in your brain churning away engineering something new.

Although you have tons to say, the number of words you know is fairly limited, but growing every day. I love how proud you are as you learn new things and when you point out pictures in books and tell me what they are.

You are such a great big brother and little brother. You are perfect at being Otto! We all love you so much. Happy 2nd Birthday!

Last year, for Max's 3rd Birthday, Joe and I had blown up balloons and put them on the floor in his bedroom for when he woke up.

This year I wanted to change it up and do something special for Otto's Birthday so I decided to get a couple dozen helium balloons and put them in his bedroom in the middle of the night so he'd be greeted with a little party when he woke up. The thing is, Max and Otto share a room and neither of the boys has been sleeping well recently - at all. I ended up putting them in Otto's room when I was up feeding Wren about 2am. Otto woke around 5am and I rushed in to (1) try and lull him back to sleep and (2) keep Max sleeping. #1 didn't work and #2 only worked for about 20 minutes. Mind you, it's still pitch black at this hour of the morning, so the balloons were fairly well hidden in the darkness. But as the minutes passed, Otto was itching to get out of bed and Max was sitting up in bed looking around. I could tell Max was eyeing the odd shapes and shadows on the ceiling trying to figure out what it was. Otto got out of bed and felt the strings on the balloons as he walked across his room, which throughly freaked him out. Max was asking what the shadows in the room were because he didn't like them. So, here it is, Sunday morning nubbing 6am. Two toddlers both a little off kilter from the "surprise" for Otto's Birthday. I ended up turning the lights on dimly and let's just say that's when the party started. Oh, were they excited to see balloons, which resulted in the boys each grabbing as many as they could and racing at full speed in circles around the house, balloons flying behind them. I think Otto "got" that it was his Birthday and seemed to love playing with the balloons all day long (more on this later).

I'm not going to name any names, but someone in our house must have read this popular post and figured it was entirely appropriate for moms of sons to replicate what dads with daughters are supposed to do for Birthday breakfasts... Otto blew out these two candles so fast - before I even had the plate set down in front of him - that I think I missed catching a photo of them lit. He loved the colorful sprinkles on his #2 pancake and was definitely catching on that this day was going to be all about him!

Next up, cake. I usually make a cake for the kid's Birthdays, so I quickly whipped this up, even throwing extra sprinkles into the Funfetti cake mix. Here are the "Before" and "After the decorators got ahold of it" photos...

We all decided to take the party outside after naps. Otto had a blast running around with the balloons tied to his jacket. I had an epiphany that a running resistance parachute would be the best Birthday gift of all for both of the boys. Otto looked just too cute racing around with all the balloons tied to him. I kept asking if he wanted me to take them off, but that always came with a firm "No!"

Otto got wonderful gifts from his family. A couple favorites were the Lego camper from Jamie and a Sort & Snap Pegboard from Grams. But I do have to say that I was so thrilled when he opened his last gift - the Boogie Monster book and dancing legs - that Joe and I got him.

Although the below photo doesn't capture this too well, as soon as I told Otto about the book and put the boogie legs on him, Otto just got up and started dancing around. Jumping, spinning, doing "happy feet," grabbing some balloons and, well, boogie-ing!!! He's always been fun and goofy and up for a laugh!

Since Otto's birthday was on a Sunday, we decided to bring in an Elmo cake to school on Monday for his class' snack. His teachers made him a Birthday crown, lit a #2 candle and his friends sang him Happy Birthday. Even Max came to the toddler room to help celebrate again.