Happy 2nd birthday, li'l man

My son Carson turned two years old today. A nascent yet popular tradition in the household is that smallish people have to find their gifts, scattered (not hidden) around the domicile. Carson attacked this task with glee, picking up the smaller presents or standing by the larger ones, crying "present! present!" Soon a pile was accumulated, a dozen or so gifts. With the one exception bestowed by Grandma and Grandpa (visiting while on national tour), everything was wrapped with Pixar Cars paper; in total I used up four rolls (with mere scraps remaining).

Unwrapped, Carson got a marble funhouse set (build structures and pour marbles through them), some expansions for his GeoTrax train set, a few shirts, a game much like Ker-Plunk, a toy workbench (assembly required, so I know what I'll be doing later), a framed picture of Lightning McQueen, and a whole bunch of the Matchbox-sized Cars cars. He had gotten a few for Christmas 2006, but this was the motherlode, the treasure trove: every Cars car he didn't yet have. (I got lucky a few times at Target or such, but mostly, thanks go out to eBay. Determination was crucial; they're not hard to find on the auction site, but you gotta be certain you win 'em.) We opened every one of them, and they're already in play. It was a pretty good morning.

Somehow, and I cannot explain it, and perhaps this is just a coincidental phase of his, but we managed to name him about as perfectly as possible, given his current obsession with both the toys and the film (which is, without hesitation, a total delight and, I think, Pixar's best yet).

After making something of a botched and last-minute job of wrapping for both Christmas and Amalie's birthday a few weeks ago (everything done, but in a down-to-the-wire crush which was no fun at all), I got the jump on this birthday run and had everything wrapped and stashed before the weekend. And that really, really helped. This past holiday season was the first time I really felt the tsunami of Christmas-birthday-birthday all falling within an eight-week period, and I think I've learned not to let it overwhelm me again (which was quite easily done). Even a little bit of forward planning helps a lot.

Carson's happily charging around, squeaking joy at each new present discovered, and later naming every one of the Cars characters, was all worth it.