In the Tarves household, it is not every day that Alex turns two.  In fact, I think at this point he’s probably about 103 by now, that is, if you count the amount of times we’ve put a candle in a bowl of ice cream while singing and signing happy birthday to Alex…and Linda…and chair…and piece-of-rice-on-the-table, etc. etc. etc.

Well this year’s birthday party was a great success! (Okay, number of hands of those who just said, “Great Success!” a la Sacha Baron Cohen to yourself.  Yeah, I thought so.)  Anyway, so this year we opted to save ourselves and loved ones from being subjected to one of those toddlerific, migraine-inducing, palaces of fun, and have a shin-dig at our house.  We banked on good weather, and the gods of smiled on us that day, because the weather was beautiful.

All our favorite peeps came for the festivities, from 11am to 11pm, Whoot! Whoot!  (Really folks 11pm?  He’s two!)  We borrowed Great Grammy’s bouncy house, played on the swing set, ate pizza, hummus and Mexican dip. We had all the ingredients for a rip roarin’ good time.

The overwhelming theme of the birthday festivities was Winnie-the-Pooh, so Mommy went a little overboard and bought every Winnie-the-Pooh decoration on the market, and decided to make a beehive cake from scratch (which turned out to be delicious btw).  So of course when it came time to sing happy birthday to the little fella, we were all excited as we know how much Mr. Alex love himself some Happy Birthday! ©.

If one could pictorially represent the emotion of pure fear, I think it would look like a photo of this poor child sitting in front of flames whilst his loved ones yelled at him in unison.  What a joyous tradition.  At least the consolation prize of cake and ice cream, would lead us to a  sugar-high-induced marathon.

After running his uncle around, and around, and around the house we attempted to interest the child in opening his presents.  The valiant attempt by Mom and Dad, to round out the birthday festivities with a present free-for-all, was no match for the inevitable crash.  Falling asleep in Daddy’s arms before the last guests bid their final farewells, was evidence enough that we don’t need to go anywhere to have a good time!

P.S.  Thank you notes are coming.  We promise!

Okay, so it’s been awhile.  In fact, if we had been dating, this would be a drunk-dial saying, “I miss you, come back!  I’ve changed.”  Well, the reality is that I haven’t changed.  I’m going to try to stay on top of this, and keep our avid readers apprised of the latest Alex Tarves breaking news (because let’s face it, that’s what our readers really want), but no guarantees I won’t go AWOL again.  So if you’ve decided to take me back, and I fall short, consider yourself warned.  I’m sure your bffs will be there for you again with a pint of Cherry Garcia.

And so, without further ado…let’s begin.

Since Alex has been an Obama man all along (long before he could really make coherent sounds, he would say “raaaaccckkkk” when we asked him if Obama or Clinton would win the Democratic Primary), we thought it fitting to post the transcript of Obama’s inaugural address since it marks such an amazingly unique time in this country.

Neither Stephanie nor I were alive for a time so depressing and fully unhopeful; with Americans everywhere lacking a sense of trust in their Government, lacking a sense of patriotism, and lacking any real connection to each other. Obama represents, if nothing else, the promise that things can get better and we can again return to the glorious place we once held on the world stage.

Plus, he’s our brand new funky president.

So we went to our favorite park to partake in a morning of swinging, sliding, running around, lolly-gagging, tomfoolery, etc. It was probably the coldest day since last winter. The wind was whipping at a good 30-40 miles an hour, but we decided to tough it out.

Alex was having a blast. Swinging, climbing, see-sawing, sliding. It was a great morning. We were getting ready to leave, but got pulled back in by the ginormous big boy slide. The prospects of going down that were simply too hard to resist. Since Daddy doesn’t slide right, Mommy took him up the stairs, sat down, and started a-movin’. All of a sudden, shreeks of pain and agony.

Alex has a bit of a habit of trying to stop himself from going down the slide by employing the “stick my legs out and into the side of the slide” technique. Unlucky for him, Mommy had the power of gravity, inertia, and momentum on her side and they kept sliding. He cried for a while and we assumed he hurt his leg a little so we headed home.

Once home, Alex couldn’t walk. He would try and try, but he just kept falling down. Not good. Since it was naptime, we gave him some ibuprofen, put him to bed, then called the doctor. They said take him to the hospital, so off we went on a now-beautiful Sunday afternoon. Really turned out to be not such a bad experience. We were seen in under two hours. The doctor was insanely thorough. Of course, by this point, Alex was trying to run around (albeit in a limping fashion); but generally didn’t appear to be in any pain.

The doctor said we should wait and see, thinking it was a sprain, and pass up the opportunity for an x-ray at this stage. So we hobbled home, $50 lighter in the wallet, and with a kid who still walked like the cryptkeeper. We have a follow up at an orthopedist on Tuesday, so we’ll keep you all updated.

Update: Alex had his appointment with the orthopedist last night. He’s been walking fine since Monday morning, so we were hoping it to just be a mere formality. He surmised that Alex cracked a growth plate in his leg, which, while sounding like it should be the worst thing that can happen to any human being, is actually quite normal and relatively benign.

Symptoms include:

• A brief burst of pain followed by seemingly no pain at all.
• Inability to bear any weight on the limb followed by running around like a crazy person.

Check. And check.

Alex has developed into quite the little humorist. In addition to running around the house laughing his butt off and “washing the spider out,” he likes to throw all of his books off the bookshelf (and read the last one left of course), play with his Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set (he can even tell you what “M” and “D” say), and wave “bye-bye.”

He has also taken to copying us pretty severely, so we have to start watching what we say and do. In this video, you’ll see him start to bang on the floor when Stef starts reading Barnyard Dance. She had no idea what he was doing until she realized that’s how daddy’s been doing the “stomp your feet” part since we’re usually sitting on the ground. Scary stuff.