Birthday Boy!

As most of you know, Freddy turned 2 on Oct 21.  Hard to believe he's grown so much since our little 7-pound jaundiced boy in the photo above, taken at the hospital in Baltimore.  Or compared to the one-year-old who started crying when we sang Happy Birthday at his birthday last year (and didn't eat his cake).  Granted, putting the whole cake in front of him might have been a little overwhelming:

Since he was in the middle of a bout of swine flu during hsi birthday this year, we skipped his actual birth "day" and waited until the weekend to open family gifts - which worked great, because by that point he was feeling so cooped up that we were all about to go crazy.  All the thoughtful, fun gifts were (and still are) a great distraction!  He's having an awesome time with the puzzles, blocks, trucks, books, musical instruments, ice cream toy, etc.  And so are we!  It's so fun to see him at the age where he has a little more patience to work things out, and yet is still so easily entertained and surprised by things like hearing himself play a harmonica.  This next year will be another exciting one, and we're hoping F tolerates his new baby sister.  Narda says he's totally indifferent to the babies at her house, which I guess is better than his being aggressive or overly "helpful" with them. ;)  We'll see!  Either way, it's bound to be a great year.  We had a great party on Halloween to kick it off - see the slideshow, below (if you are reading this by e-mail, you might have to click through to gowskis.blogspot.com.