We celebrated Sullivan’s second birthday yesterday up in Georgetown at his grandparents house. The party was from 10:30-12:30 and present to celebrate his special day was of course Mommy and Daddy, grandmommy and grandaddy Brown, Uncle Kirk and Aunt Carolyn along with cousins Ella Grace and Lila Rose, Godfather Allen Robertson, friends Oliver & Elliot Taylor and their parents Heidi and Peyton, Ben and Judge Baskin and their parents Joy and JJ, Cash Frankhauser and his parents Deb and Eric, Uncle David and Aunt Nancy, great granddad John and great granmommy Jo. The theme for this years birthday was Sullivan’s Favorite Things…a day filled with hats, and drums, and balls, and bugs, and balloons, and music, and cookies, and cake and friends. We had a tent filled with dozens of hats for them wear and all sorts of musical instruments for them play. Granddaddy Jerry had added a Tee Pee to the outside play scene a few months back that the kids enjoyed playing in. Allen brought a bubble blower and the kids of course had a blast chasing him and running in and out of the wall of bubbles. Damon had made a mp3 CD of all of Sullivan’s favorite songs that played throughout the yard while we enjoyed snacks and juice. Aunt Nancy drew a fun chalk mural on the breezeway chalk board to commemorate the day and the kids played on the playscape, in the sandbox, under the tent and all around the backyard under the trees. It was a lovely day and hard to believe that he is already two, with his big boy hair, and friends that he knows by name, and a list of favorite things.

The Brown Family creativity continued it’s tradition this weekend as Damon and I prepared for Sullivan’s 2nd birthday party. Usually Grandmommy Judy is our resident family cake maker but this year Damon stepped in and tried his hand at the family business. The theme for the party this year is Sullivan’s FAVORITE THINGS….a theme that was decided upon after having a difficult time pin pointing only ONE idea to celebrate his special day. So it was set to be a day filled with hats, and bugs, and drums, and balloons, and balls, and cookies, and cake and YES….A,B,C’s. Damon’s initial idea for the party was going to be all about A,B,C’s as Sullivan is all about letters these days. So Damon thought it would be fun to make a big A,B,C block for his cake. And that is exactly what he did as you can see with these pictures. I of course was set and ready to buy a regular store bought cake this year as I rarely have the motivation to jump in a do any sort of new cooking thing but Damon said “you only have one second birthday” so again Damon rides in and makes sure another Sullivan birthday is a one of a kind experience. Damon made a personalized small block cake for Sullivan and a larger scale version for the rest of the guests. The block had a big blue S on the top with A,B,C, and the letter O on the sides. (Sullivan points out the letter O’s all the time on signs and in books). I think Damon did a great job for a first time themed cake.

Mommy is still all about the new hair today. Loving the new cut and settling into big boy Sullivan sans mullet. Yes indeed it was an emotional experience but now that I am past it I am loving the new clean cut. Just captured some more pics this morning before I head off to Bible study that I wanted to post. Here he is sitting and watching his morning Elmo’s World while enjoying some berries, cheese, and cereal.

The Sullivan Mullet is now officially GONE. Yesterday Damon and I decided (kind of last minute) to give Sullivan his first haircut. It was our plan all along to wait until his second birthday to cut his hair…..at his birthday party to be exact. But as we were getting things together for our mother’s day celebration up in Georgetown we thought “hey, it probably will be too crazy to try and cut it at his party why don’t we surprise everyone at the grandparents house tomorrow with a new cut”. So we embarked on the adventure that mommy has been avoiding for months now. Despite my absolute dislike of long unruly hair on boys I have just not been able to bring myself to cut his hair. His first hair…his baby hair….the one small little curl that came in after his first birthday that I feared I would never see again…….that once gone would surely mean that my baby, my only baby boy would not be a baby anymore!….well as you can see there was just far too much emotion surrounding the decision to cut or not to cut but I forged on with confidence that I would feel better with short hair. Comforted of course by several other moms teeling me the curls often come back and it is not the end of the world despite feeling like it is.

So, we began the adventure by washing his hair as we knew we wanted to save some of the baby locks for ourselves and the grandparents. I took pictures of his long wet mullet in the tub one last time while Damon set up the full scale film shoot in the cutting room (aka the back playroom). Damon had thought through the set up and cutting distractions as he has been the first haircutter of several young children in his family. We had his blanket, his faful, his juice, snacks, his new favorite Disney movie Cars playing, all Damon’s cutting accutrements ready to go and mommy set in place to assist in anyway needed. We began the process by tieing sections of his hair in strings so Damon could get clean locks bound together for saving. We both quickly learned however, that our son was NOT going to be cooperative in this effort. Sullivan has a dislike of anyone “messing” with him or restraining him in any way. So Damon trying to hold his head still or asking him to sit in one particular chair was NOT acceptable. It took Damon 15 or 20 minutes just to tie the string around his mullet. THEN, came the first cut. I was poised in my position to capture the moment on film which happened quickly and proceeded with streams and streams of tears and sobbing on my part. I literally felt like Damon had cut off a part of my child’s body and he was going to be forever mamed! I was surprised by my emotion. I was filled with such saddness and loss…..like in one quick clip by baby was lost and stolen from my arms. Of course all of this foolishness was captured on video for us to laugh at for YEARS to come. But for the meantime we were staring at our son who although he had lost his long mullet now looked like an insane asylum patient with chopped and uneven hair. The hard part we thought was behind us but we soon learned it had just begun. Mr. I will not sit still and I will not let you touch my hair or head or anything began the most wild of wrestling matches with his father and I and cried and sqwuelled, and sqwuirmed with every attempt to break free from this horrific thing we were trying to do to him. We tried to let him play with the combs and distract him with his movie and gave him not one, not two but three sippy cups of juice, then his faful, and his blanket, and, then books, and games. Very few tactics worked. Damon worked tirelessly to get one small clip at a time avoiding stabbing him with scissors multiple times (as you can see in the one picture that looks like he IS stabbing him). Finally we landed on a short game of toss the orange football over and over again enough for Damon to finish evening out the back of his head so he didn’t look like an abused child. Damon did have to put him in a few head locks to complete the job but I think he did an extraordinary job considering his the fight his client gave him.
So, now our little baby boy has a grown up hair cut sans mullet. At first I thought it made him look stockier than he already is but today when he was playing out in the yard with his cousins I thought it made him look taller and thinner. What has surprised me most about the whole ordeal is that HE doesn’t seem to have noticed the missing mullet. He had such a habit of cocking his head back to feel the long hair tickle his neck and last night didn’t even feel or notice it was gone. And today was no different….he has shown no sign of curiosity about the missing locks. Anyway….one more child milestone past. You know I hear people say all the time “enjoy it now they grow up so quick”…and to be honest it hasn’t felt quick to me. I don’t feel like I blinked and he was two. It feels like it was forever ago that I delivered him and forever ago that I fed him a bottle and burped him and wrapped him in a burrito blanket and even forever ago since he crawled and yet I guess it has been a relatively short period of time in a big picture kind of way. There just seems to be soo many discoveries and new things crammed into a compact period of time that you never feel like you have time to relish and get used to his new endeavor before he is off doing something new. That’ why I am enjoying this blog soo much. It has been giving me time to stop and write and reflect on an event long enough to try and celebrate and cherish it while it is fresh in my memory. It will be fun to read through all this 16 years from now when he is graduating from High School ( or 14 years from now if he takes after his father and uncle Kirk)…but for now I can’t even imagine him old enough to ride a bike or go to school or GOD FORBID date a girl….ugh…..all of that will make the first haircut seem like “baby stuff” 🙂

Sullivan woke up from his nap today requesting “Mr. PIG”, his soft money bank. I granted his request and then he quickly reminded me “put in”….as in where are those shiny fun metal things to put inside Mr. Bank. So I proceeded to bring in a handful of penny’s and coins for him to put in his bank. This has become another favorite activity of Sullivan’s. Sometimes he will steal coins from daddy’s table and put in his bank. Mr. Pig is already pretty heavy. We’ll have to go and deposit them in his savings account. He likes the penny counting machine over at Velocity CU. Who knows we may have a budding banker on our hands….but then again after all the events of the day it may well be a basketball star, or geologist, or trash man for all I know 🙂

P.S. Mommy is blog happy today as you can see. I finally had some time to sit and catch up. I know you all like to see things but I also want Sullivan to have something to look back at when he is older….a digital scrapbook of sorts.