Abe turned two on Saturday. I’d say some stuff here about how sad it is that I don’t have any babies anymore, except he is TOTALLY STILL A BABY AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

I thought maybe I could get away with one Abe is two now post, but then, predictably, there were a lot of pictures. So I’m dumping all the general birthday photos on you today, and then later in the week I’ll talk about his party.

Abe at two is a hilarious little whirlwind. He gives great hugs, and he never sits still, except for the first five minutes he spends anywhere he’s not used to. The only TV he’ll watch is a particular Thomas episode in which eggs are broken because Thomas goes too fast, “Signing Times,” and the first five minutes of Annie (he’s in it for the fight scene early on and mostly just says, “fight?” repeatedly until it happens then wants to turn it off). Despite my fears of setbacks, he remains thoroughly reliable with the potty. We don’t even remind him much anymore. He’ll suddenly jump up from whatever he’s doing, yell, “pee pee!” and then run to the bathroom, yelling, “QUICK!” And he’s very insistent when he DOESN’T need to go, too: “Went,” he tells us and refuses to be moved by our pleading that maybe he should go again before an hour long car ride. He’s an independent and stubborn little boy. He has very specific ideas about clothes: both which ones to wear and who’s going to put them on (i.e. he is). It takes a long time to get him dressed in the mornings these days. He’s a big fan of trains, kitties, the music of Laurie Berkner, and his brothers. We all think he’s amazing and very, very tiring. It’s nice that there are five of us big people around to play with him.

His actual birthday was marred by an unexpected $1000 repair to our car. Ouch. So we put off our planned trip to the zoo until Sunday (also the day of his party), but we did fit in a quick photo session while the car was at the shop:

We also fit in a trip to the thrift shop next door to the dealership where we were getting a second opinion (verdict: same diagnosis, estimate $300 higher than the first place)….where we found him some monkey slippers:

And then the next day we made it to the zoo. Abe’s been talking about going back to the zoo since the last time we went (“Again? Choo choo? RIDE!”), so it seemed like a good birthday outing. We bought a membership, which, after a $10 teacher discount, was only $5 more than paying one day’s admission for all of us would have been.

The gray flamingos were itty bitty babies on their first day out in the flamingo pond last time we were there. They’re getting so big! And starting to get some pink in their feathers.

Abe was acting very two that day. Instead of looking at animals, he kept getting distracted by things like these steps and wanting to go up and down them and sit on them for half an hour:

I tried to get a nice picture of the kids with the Willie B statue. Here Gus is picking Willie B’s nose while Ari tries to rein in Abe. I don’t know what Milo’s looking at:

I continue to attempt to get a great picture of Abe on the train. Before we got on, they told us they were having maintenance issues that meant the train was louder than normal. This turned out to mean that it made a horrific squealing noise that echoed painfully as we went through the tunnels.

It was kind of chilly. In the low 50s and sunny, but the wind kept kicking up, and we were a little underdressed for wind.

We took Abe on his first (unless I’m forgetting one) carousel ride:

This is how he looked the whole time. He wouldn’t let go of me, and he was clearly pretty nervous, but as soon as we got off he said, “Again?”