The Rest of Belle's Birthday

After a great birthday nap, Annabelle woke up to open a few more presents and enjoy some birthday chow with her family. I made beef stew for dinner, which Belle happily ate up. After dinner we got out the ice cream cake and sang "Happy Birthday to You" to Annabelle... the moment that she has been waiting for for nearly a month! She didn't wait for a fork to dig in to her birthday cake (don't know where she got the idea that it was okay to dig into the cake with your hands... haha). After birthday cake, Annabelle had to leave the room while I brought out her big present, a new kitchen for Bellee. When she came back into the room to see the kitchen, she was SO excited! She LOVES her new kitchen! She fed everyone and was entertained by the kitchen for the rest of the night.

For Annabelle's 2nd birthday, we celebrated with a couple of things that I think we'll keep as traditions for celebrating birthdays in the Donald household. Annabelle started her day with birthday cookies for breakfast (see picture in previous birthday post).  These birthday cookies are sugar cookies made by Mommy and cut into Annabelle birthday shapes (this year it was the number 2, the letter A, and puppy dogs that look like Macy). Annabelle loved both eating the cookies and choosing which of her birthday cookies to eat next. Another thing that I liked was opening presents throughout the day instead of all at once. This way she got to open and play with the toys before moving on to another present. A couple of our new traditions are ones that I'm borrowing from my childhood.  We always had an annual birthday candle that you burn down each year, and I found one of these for Annabelle (and Corgan when his birthday rolls around). Since I just bought this one, we had to play catch up this year and burn 2 years' worth of candle. Annabelle didn't notice this too much this year, but I'm sure that as she gets older, it'll be something that she looks forward to each birthday just as we always did. Another tradition was playing the "Happy, Happy Birthday to You" song from Mickey's Splashdance record (yes, we had that one on vinyl) throughout the day.  This was Annabelle's 2nd birthday to have an ice cream cake, and I think we'll be keeping that tradition too since she seems to love it as much as I do!

It's still hard to believe that my baby is already 2 years old!  It was adorable to see her trying to put her "two" fingers up to tell you that she's "two years old".  She was able to do it a couple of times, but usually she ended up with her thumb and pointer finger out.

The pictures from Annabelle's birthday day are on our photo album.  Enjoy!