It's official... I'm a terrible mother!

It's been over two weeks since Daniel's birthday and I JUST realized that I forgot to post the pictures from his party. I can't believe that I got so caught up in Jacob starting school that I forgot this! Can you tell he's a second child???


The cake - you know, Daniel and the lion??? :)
I was actually supposed to make this cake for his 1st birthday, but we ended up going on vacation to the beach the week of his birthday, so that didn't happen.


Daniel smiles as he opens his card from Jacob. It sang the song "Who Let the Dogs Out?" He's still dancing around to that card more than two weeks later.


Emma helps Daniel read one of his cards.


Daniel shows off one of his presents from Jacob.


At the time that he opened this, I truly think this was his favorite gift... SNACKS!!! Now, I would have to say his favorite gift is probably a tie between the aquadoodle and the knee hockey set (both gifts from the Wilsons.) They always come up with the best gift ideas!


All the kids sit around while Daniel opens more of his presents.


Daniel on his "new to him" rocking horse. AKA Jacob's old rocking horse. Again... second child syndrome. What can I say? I love to go "shopping" in our attic. Well, now I do my shopping in our basement, but you get the point. :)


Blowing out the candles. I was amazed that he remembered what to do. I put the cake down in front of him and had to light the candles three times (and I had to move the cake further away from him each time) because he kept blowing out the candles as soon as I lit them.


Mmmm... cake!


Party's over! Time to take out the trash. As one of Jacob's chores, he helps Dylan take out the trash. As usual, Daniel has to do everything his brother does and insists on helping, too.

Ladies and Gentlemen... the binkie has left the building!

That's right. Most of you already know that Daniel has been attached to his binkie from day one. But, now... he has officially been binkie-free since Thursday. He only used the binkie in his bed and in the car, but I thought we would never get that thing away from him. Especially when he started to have a favorite binkie. Sure, it was cute - each night, he would reach into the drawer and pull out his favorite binkie. But, what wasn't so cute was when he would wake up in the middle of the night because he couldn't find it. I've known for a while that he needed to get rid of it, but he's just so stubborn that I was literally terrified of going cold turkey.

But, once again, my children amaze me. He hasn't screamed at all and has done great. We let him throw them away himself so that he would see it for himself and know that they were gone. (I pulled them out of the trash when he wasn't looking in case of emergency!) And since then, he's only asked for it twice and both times we just told them they were all gone and that was the end of it. We did have a close call today when he found my hiding place for the "in case of emergency" binkies. He pulled one of them out and put it straight in his mouth (yes, for all you germ freaks out there, they were cleaned after I pulled them out of the trash can!). I went (ok, ran...) straight over and pulled it out of his mouth. I then grabbed the bunch of binkies and proceeded to sneak upstairs and hide them in Dylan's sock drawer. Again, amazingly, Daniel didn't even cry.

Here's to no more binkies!!!!!! Now, if only I could get him to stop beating up on his older brother. Oh, well - baby steps, right? :)