Turning Two With Tents & Trucks

It's Elmo-tastic!

Originally published 24 June 2015

I think Mummy and Daddy will need to look for a bigger house soon, or at least look at building a special new Oliver extension to our house, after the mammoth present-receiving event that was my second birthday. Slowly but surely pieces of furniture are being moved out in favour of more space being taken up by my ever-growing toy collection. Just yesterday I saw Daddy moving his tower of CDs out of the lounge; good riddance to most of them, too.

Quite cunningly I managed to eke my birthday out over several days, starting on Friday when Mummy and Daddy gave me the first batch of gifts. There was a cool indoor tent covered in dinosaurs, a new bag for daycare also with dinosaurs, a toy rubbish truck and, of course, a book - The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Trucks (and buses) are a couple of the things that fascinate me the most at the moment, so the rubbish truck was probably my favourite.

Mummy and Daddy had taken the day off work, which meant I had a bit of time to play with everything before being dropped off at daycare so that they could go and see Jurassic World at the movies. There was a bit of an underlying dinosaur theme to the day, now that I think about it.

Sunday was all about the birthday party. Mummy had spent hours making and decorating my cake, colourfully featuring my favourite character - Elmo! The party was quite Elmo-tastic actually, with big pictures of him up on the walls and special Elmo napkins. Thankfully Daddy didn't go as far as dressing up in an Elmo outfit or I'd have had to disown him and leave the country.

June is a popular birthday month for the Hartland boys, with cousin Ben's birthday just 2 days after mine, so the party was a joint one for my second birthday and baby Ben's first. It was a full house when everyone turned up at 2pm, with all my grandparents, plus great-grandma and great-aunt on Daddy's side, and Aunty Jemma's parents. Everyone arrived with gifts though, so I didn't have to turn any away.

I was really spoiled with all the great presents - a toy lawnmower, wheelbarrow, farm set, fire engine, animal jigsaw, bike and a framed Cat in the Hat cross-stitch that Nana made. There was tons of yummy food too, so "cake" and "biccies" were words used frequently whenever my plate was empty and I needed to give someone a prompt to replenish it.

It was a great birthday with lots of toys to play with, lots of food to eat and lots of appearances by Elmo. Can't wait for the next birthday for more of the same; maybe I should convince Mummy and Daddy that we need another party soon since I'm Elmost three!