The first order of business after we all arrived was to finish decorating the cupcakes. Mom cut a bunch of really cute toppers on the Cricut using the Create a Critter cartridge, and Sophie had great fun helping to stick them all into the cakes. Actually, she may have enjoyed making the animal noises as she did so even more. :)
This is very serious business, you know!
And then she couldn't help herself any longer and bit right into a cupcake. Luckily Beth was on hand to put a Sophie-sized apron over her adorable little dress before she made too big of a mess.
Ahhh, life is good when you're two and get to eat a cupcake before dinner. Especially if this is the only time you're ever allowed to have a whole cupcake in the first place, much less before the rest of your food!
Sophie got the cupcake cleaned off of her face, and then we all had a proper dinner before she opened her gifts. Oh, and I pulled her hair up in pigtails, too...and was a bit shocked at how much she looks like the Olsen twins when they were on Full House!
My brother is a seriously amazing woodworker, and he built Sophie a toy chest...which she promptly wanted to climb into. I joked with her that it was her new "big girl bed" (which she also got for her birthday).
And then it was on to the rest of the gifts. My aunt Linda gave Sophie a Hello Kitty piggy bank- gotta get her started early on Sanrio, after all! Maybe she'll grow up to love it all as much as I still do.
Mom and Dad gave her several gifts, including a massive Elmo coloring and sticker book- the girl has a serious Muppet crush on Elmo!
And of course she got lots of adorable clothes...
...like this Elmo shirt (and matching shorts).
Sophie is a little monkey-baby- she went from the floor to her little rocking chair to sitting in the big chair to standing in the big chair and back through the cycle again...several times over!
Sitting in the chair...
Standing in the chair...
Standing on the floor...
Sitting on the floor...
...and back to sitting in the chair again!
And then, of course, back to standing. :)
I usually just shoot candids, but Dad (who was shooting with his camera, as well) and I did try to get her to sit in the "show us what you got" pose a couple of times.
This was the result...clearly she was not pleased to be interrupted!
This is the look that says, "can I get on with it, please?"
You never know what's going to come out of this girl's mouth, and it's usually adorable. Like when she opened up a package containing an umbrella and exclaimed, "I has a hook!!"
The hook happened to come with a rain hat, too. :)
Sophie didn't quite understand why she had to keep opening packages and couldn't just stop and play with each toy as she unwrapped it, so eventually my brother stepped in to help speed things along.
She was really happy to get this little set of cleaning toys. She loves playing house, especially in her little play kitchen, so now she can pretend to clean, too!
My aunts Linda and Tina.
And this is my Mom (on the left) with Beth's grandmother (on the right). Nanny has been receiving treatment for an agressive cancer for the last several months, and we were all so very glad that she could be there.
My grandparents had a tradition of giving my brother and I $2 bills on our birthday (in the amount of our age, with an extra $1 thrown in for odd years), and this year they started the same thing with Sophie, too!
Speaking of grandparents, Grandmom gave Sophie a kazoo, which she loved and learned to play pretty quickly. I'm sure Beth and Jon were thriiiiiilled.
I didn't hang around for long after the party since I'd been out of town in Ohio all week, and Sophie's birthday was one of my stops on the way home. In all honesty I was probably just a tiny bit too tired to have been safe driving, but I did make it!
The next big Sophie-event will hopefully be when we all go to the State Fair. She loved it last year when she was just 1, and it'll be awesome to see what she's like there at two!