Happy Half-Birthday to Louis!

When Louis turned 2 six months ago, we celebrated with a weak attempt at a homemade cake. As pathetic as the cake was, the stakes were low since Louis wasn't here to critique it. In fact, six months ago we hadn't even received our Travel Approval.

Way back then, our living room didn't look like this every night:


And our breakfast table didn't look like this:


Oh, what a dull Louis-less life we led!

Now that Louis is home--and we have been his official Mama and Baba for five months today (but who's counting)--I insisted that we celebrate his half-birthday together. Today isn't the official day, but I didn't want his half-birthday to get lost in the general Mother's Day hoopla. And today I actually had time to bake a cake.

Louis gave his approval to my plans to use our train cake pan (a gift from his Aunt Katie, Uncle Steve, and cousin Andrew long before we even knew about Louis):

Then, while I baked, the half-birthday boy took a two-hour nap.

When he woke up, we took the cakes out of the pans and iced the "tracks." Louis adamantly didn't want the train cars to have frosting, and it was his cake. So this was the result:


So, how did Louis like his cake?


Can you tell that's his cheese smile?

The truth is that he liked the idea of the cake and he was very, very excited to see a cake shaped like a "dickadoo."

He just didn't want to eat it.

Don't let the empty-looking plate fool you. He put the train car-shaped piece of cake back on the serving plate and asked for more grapes.

And I half-caught myself telling him he could have more grapes when he had eaten his cake. There goes my Mother of the Year Award. ;)

Still, Louis loved that we sang and he thought the train cake was pretty awesome. Maybe one day he'll even take a taste. Meanwhile, we can't remember having even half this much fun on Louis's 2nd birthday.

As Louis would say, "Nope." Not even close.