Susannah's 2nd Birthday

This is exactly 1 month and 1 day late, but better late than never!

Susannah turned 2 years old six days after her little sister, Sylvia, was born. As I knew their birthdays were going to be close, more than ever I wanted to do something significant to celebrate Susannah in the midst of someone else getting so much attention from everyone. Plus birthdays are special anyway!!

Susannah - 1 week after her 2nd birthday

I knew that most likely I would not have the energy to make her a special birthday cake at the time of her birthday, and I really did want her to have a special cake. Early February I put my brain in gear and decided to make her a bear birthday cake.

Wanting even the cake and icing to be special - and having an aversion to buttercream frosting, and having pregnancy cravings for peanut butter & chocolate! - I decided to make a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. The next problem was I wanted a dark brown bear and not a "peanut butter brown" bear. So I mixed up the frosting, kept a little bit out for the contrast areas and added cocoa powder and chocolate syrup to the rest to get it the chocolate-brown color I was looking for. After I had the cake finished, I covered it well with plastic wrap and froze it.

The afternoon of Susannah's birthday Daniel got the cake out of the freezer and I added the peanut M&M eyes and candles.


Then a little impromptu-like, we called Daniel's parents - who live all of 4 miles away - and asked if they wanted to join the party. They said "sure!" and we said "Great! Can we bring it there?" Haha! Our house was rather disheveled, but we had a meal (that someone brought us), cake and presents! They graciously let us crash their place with the party.

After supper, it was time for cake and presents!! Knowing that her birthday was coming up, I had purposely been reading a Richard Scary story to Susannah that is about Sniff's surprise birthday, and singing the Happy Birthday song to her. She was so very excited when we sang Happy Birthday to HER!!

Right after we finished singing "Happy Birthday."

She didn't have any previous experience with birthday candles, but she blew both of hers out just fine. :-) Then we ate cake... (which was SO good!!)


...and opened presents!! Or, "paysets!" as she says it. :-) I had gotten some "big sister" presents to give her at the hospital if we had the chance, but the morning she had come to visit Sylvia and me, it was rather busy and we didn't get to give them to her. So she had some extra birthday gifts!


For memories' sake, we gave her: Alphabet magnets, number magnets, 2 new pink pacis, miniature animal crackers, and the original birthday gift was a vintage Fisher Price barn, silo and some animals, people, etc. (My sister snatched it up at a thrift store for a steal and then offered it to me if I wanted it. Yes!!)


A note about the "new pacis" that we gave her. She was so very excited when she opened them up! She wanted the package opened right away, and then she had to taste them. She put one in her mouth for a few seconds, then took it out and tried the other one. It was fun to watch. :-)

Sylvia spent most of the evening taking a nap on one of their chairs (6 days old):
After the party was over, Susannah spent some time playing with her Papa:

And that was the day Susannah turned 2!! The days after her birthday as we ate more of her birthday cake, we often lit the candles and sang Happy Birthday to her again, just for fun. She loved our singing "Happy Day" (as she calls it) and getting to blow out the candles again.