Friday, September 21, 2012

Ryan's 2nd Birthday Party

For months, we had been talking about yellow digger trucks, reading Sandra Boynton's Birthday Monsters, working on homemade party decorations, and practicing singing the happy birthday song so that he wouldn't be scared of it.

And finally, Ryan's big birthday weekend was here! He waited with anticipation for his friends to arrive at his party. As he watched the first guests make their way through the front entrance, he softly whispered, "friends are coming".


After that, it is all a blur. We were so busy celebrating with everyone the entire weekend. We enjoyed spending time with Barry's parents on Friday, our friends on Saturday, and then my side of the family on Sunday. A big THANK YOU to everyone who came out to celebrate our newly turned two-year-old boy! We are very blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. They are seriously some of the sweetest people and I don't know where we would be without them in our lives.

From top to bottom: part of our friday playgroup, part of our wednesday playgroup, more from friday playgroup, Barry's parents, E- one of my best friends from high school, my friend M and her daughter and son, my friend C and her sons, my friend J and her daughters, and my side of the family: aunts, cousins, and my dad.



I think that Ryan enjoyed his second birthday parties more than he did his first birthday party. Here are a few things that we purposefully did this time around to make him happier:

-a good nap beforehand
-at least 45 minutes in the room before everyone arrived, so that he would have a chance to become comfortable with the environment
-only had a few people sing the happy birthday song to him, rather than a huge group of people focusing their attention on him at once
-prepared for the party for weeks and months in advance by talking about it, acting out different scenarios, etc.

Ryan is also more familiar with social situations now than he was at this time last year, and he can actually understand what a birthday party is, which was not the case with a one-year-old. I think that he enjoyed everything birthday-related this year, and that all of our celebrations were successful.


1 comment:

  1. It looks like everyone had so much fun, especially Ryan!!!

    ReplyDelete

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