2 days before his birthday, we celebrated my father-in-law, sister-in-law and gabriel's birthdays at the boathouse in new westminster. it was crabfest, my favourite! an unfortunate incident when we were there...the fire alarms in the hotel were set off and we had a table right under the alarm bell. poor gabe was a wreck! he hated the noise, wouldn't settle down, and had to be comforted by me until well after the alarm went off. during dinner he kept obsessing over the bell and pointing at it. i was amused :-)
the next day we celebrated gabe's 2nd birthday at the burnaby central railway with friends and family in attendance. the birthday boy was a bit apprehensive about the train ride (he's been on it before!), but after a few minutes he settled down, much to the relief of the "conductor"! my parents decked him out with a conductor's hat and whistle and took him for a 2nd train ride.
in keeping with the train venue, gabe's bday cake was decked out with thomas the train, and all the party favours were train-themed. ironically, gabe doesn't even know who thomas is, but he loves playing with his melissa & doug train tracks, and always pumps his arms and waves at the skytrain (sometimes we'll sit on the couch for 20 minutes just waiting to see the trains going by - every 3 minutes). yah, it's great :P
in the pre-preparation for his bday party, i told myself there would be no 3rd birthday party :P it was so much easier to plan for his 1st bday since i wasn't back at work yet and had nothing but time to plan. this year felt like chaos...working OT for month-end deadlines, year-end deadlines, aon hewitt merger activities, ugh...i was just exhausted. but after all was said and done, it really is great to see gabe and all of his little friends together, especially since playdates are fewer and far between these days...darn work gets in the way of everything!
i'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but gabe's actual birthday was not his best. he had a tantrum in the morning at home as we got ready to go to my office, he had a tantrum at granville island, and then he was uber-fussy when we went for dinner at cactus club with my family (not even the ipod could entertain him). over the weekend his bedtime got all messed up so he was never in bed until 10 p.m. and then he would yell in bed for another hour, so that definitely didn't help matters. i fear 2 is going to be a difficult year with gabe...but hopefully once he starts talking things will get better.
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