Birthday Boy

Well, another successful birthday has come and gone.

My son turned two on the 11th, as you know, and it was a weekend of birthday activities.

First, the butter.



Now, for those of you who don't know about the butter, and most of you probably don't, I can't really offer you much except that it has been a tradition in our family passed down from one generation to the next. On the morning of a birthday, you are supposed to wake up the birthday boy/girl by smearing a glob of greasy margarine, or, in my case, I Can't Believe It's Butter, on their nose. Last year, it was done to smiles. This year, as you can see from the picture above, the little man wasn't too thrilled. But still, when my mother asked on the day of his party if I had put butter on his nose the previous morning, I was able to give her a resounding yes!

During a family discussion, I was told once that it was for good luck. A little research comes up with this explanation from a birthday traditions around the world Web site.

Canada - Greasing the nose with butter or margarine. In Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Newfoundland) the birthday child is ambushed and their nose is greased for good luck. The greased nose makes the child too slippery for bad luck to catch them. This tradition is reputed to be of Scottish decent.

I suppose this makes sense since I believe I am about 1/64th Scottish.

Anyhow, this year I forgot to grease Rich, whose birthday passed on the 8th with much less fanfare, I am afraid, than our son's. I suppose that means he is doomed for a year of bad luck. Perhaps if I get him on my birthday, I can reverse the curse.

Anyway, the party went off without a hitch. Last year, for his first birthday, I was worried about the fact that I didn't have fancy holders for the condiments. This year, we were smart and ordered pizza and bought four cases of beer. That way, people were too drunk to realize we did not have quite the spread as last year. But it certainly made for a stress-free partay. I was so relaxed, I didn't even vaccuum the welcome mat before guests started arriving.

Obviously, gifts were the highlight of the party. And I don't know if you can see from this pic, but my son was literally jumping for joy when we finally let him in the family room with all the presents.




It's hard to figure out yet which one is his favorite, but he certainly enjoyed playing on his sand and water table he got from Nani, which, by the way, took me two hours to put together!

(p.s. the little blond cutie in the pic is Braedan's main squeeze!)