Our Little Man's Second Birthday

Hold him a little longer

Rock him a little more

Tell him another story

(You've only told him four)

Let him sleep on your shoulder

Rejoice in his happy smile

He's only two and a half

For such a little while

~ Authour unknown ~

           Our little ArrowBoy turned two last Thursday, and although the poem above is about a two-and-a-half year old, it brought a lump to my throat, knowing that all too soon my little boy will, by the grace of God, be adding months...yes, and years...to his age. He is my pensive one, my giver of kisses and hugs, who is happiest when he can crawl onto my lap or nestle his  head in my neck. He's a lover of stories and construction vehicles and Mickey Mouse and cleaning supplies; he's my diligent little dish washer, who loves to vacuum, and stir the food, and hide treasures in the bottom drawer of the freezer...or the microwave! He's a collector of little stones when we go for a walk, and a chaser of guinea fowls and ducks; he is..yes, a boy as per that cute little definition: A NOISE WITH DIRT ON!! And oh, how is it possible for one so small to have such immense brown eyes with which to render his Mama speechless and without resistance?

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   This year, instead of having a birthday party for ArrowBoy, my husband took the day off from work and we all enjoyed a lovely day together! As per usual on special days, we started the day with a merry little breakfast. Since our little guy is really into all things construction at the moment, he woke up to his bowl of oats being served on site, complete with construction vehicles and road signs!

And then we were off to the Two Oceans Aquarium for the day. We saw some pretty cute penguins there, but THIS one was so adorable, we brought him home with us!

Birthday lunch at the Spur - you've got to love family restaurants on a day like this!

While the Dad and Sweetpea were absorbed in some serious colouring in...

ArrowBoy was enjoying the view of the harbour and all those big, beautiful boats coming and going!

And JUST because it's his birthday...a yummy strawberry milkshake!

Smiles all around!

Fun with dad.

And then...the absolute, ultimate, perfect highlight to this little man's day:

Just up the road from our home there are some major construction going on as our town's sewer system is upgraded and expanded. So earlier in the week I called the civils company that is doing all the excavations there at the moment, and arranged with the engineer in charge of the site to bring ArrowBoy around for a ride in the backhoe loader - his absolute favourite of all construction machines!

The engineer - a dad to a little boy just slightly older than ArrowBoy - was super nice and went to a ton of trouble for us. On arrival at the site Arrow was given a hard hat and fluorescent vest (the latter which turned out to be way too big for him, so we ditched that idea!).

While we waited for the loader to show up, the children were fascinated by a tipper truck off-loading some sand. 

The driver saw us watching and pointing, and invited us for a drive!! Let me tell you, 'twas a mission for this Preggy Belly to make it up into that cabin  - I had no idea just how high it was from the ground! But in we got and the children loved it - the massive cabin, the very bumpy ride, the crackle of the two-way radio...then we watched a loader scoop some more sand onto our truck, and soon our friend the engineer showed up with Arrow's ride of choice:

And finally, our kind engineer showed us just how to use all those fascinating levers to 'dig'. 

We could hardly get the boy back in the car - in fact, he stopped dead in his tracks and would not move an inch closer to the car, begging for "More hap-en-kap!" (his Afrikaans term for a backhoe loader). In the end the only thing that persuaded him to leave was...a promise of some birthday cake!