Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Tyler is obsessed with birthday parties right now. He keeps asking when his birthday party will be and it's probably a good thing he doesn't understand how long it will take for 6 months to pass. A couple weeks ago we told him that before we could celebrate his birthday, first it would be Jesus' birthday on Christmas Day. Well, he immediately launched into a line of questioning (misspellings are intentional and are meant to convey Tyler's dialect):

"Desus want to wear a birt-day hat?"
"Desus want to eat birt-day cake?"
"Desus want to bow out his birt-day candles?"

I responded to all of this with, "I think what Jesus really wants for his birthday is for us to love each other and for us to love him."

"Oh," said the 2-year-old who can't understand why anyone would want that when they could wear a birthday hat, blow out candles and eat cake!

After that conversation, I decided we would have a little birthday party for Jesus, so we had the celebration on Christmas Eve.

Tyler and I baked cupcakes and then he helped decorate them with sprinkles after I iced them with cream cheese frosting. I kept hearing, "I such a good helper?" throughout the entire process. He had so much fun deciding which sprinkles to use on each cupcake and he couldn't wait to have the party later that evening.

Counting the completed cupcakes Time for sprinkles

Tyler gobbling like the turkey on his apron

"Us made cupcakes!"

After dinner, we busted out the cupcakes and party hats, lit some candles and sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. We lit 2 candles, one for each of the boys, knowing full well that only Tyler would be blowing them out. Nathan was happy to sit and watch the whole spectacle, and he didn't even protest a little when we put a hat on him at his brother's request. Of course, Nathan couldn't have any of the cupcakes, so he crawled around under the table with PJ, who waited for crumbs to fall from Tyler's section of the table.

Once we finished our cupcakes, we had the boys open their ornaments (we get one for them every year). Tyler was so excited to finally open a present after seeing a few under the tree for several weeks. Nathan just liked sticking the paper and ornament box in his mouth. Tyler's ornament was Lightning McQueen because he loves some "Yi-keen", as he pronounces it, and Nathan's was a little onesie on a hanger that has the Superman "S" logo on it because to us he really is a Superbaby.

Our little birthday party for Jesus was a great way to kick off our family Christmas celebration. With all the presents and distractions, it's sometimes hard to keep the focus on Jesus at this time of year, but this was a way to get the message across to Tyler in a manner that he could understand. I think it'll be one thing we continue in future years because Tyler enjoyed it so much, and hopefully Nathan will, too, as he gets older.