Caden and Finn's Blog: Happy Boopy to Caden!

For weeks before, and now after, his 2nd birthday, Caden has been singing his birthday song: “Happy boopy to you!” He often includes other family members in his song, so he has been celebrating not only his own birthday, but also Mama’s, Dada’s, Ama’s, Adad’s, Nana’s, and Boopa’s. On April 3rd, we celebrated Caden’s birthday eve with our traditional breakfast dinner, just like we had two years previously on the evening before he was born. And on his birthday, Dada made a seastar pizza and chocolate treat. Between that cake and the seastar cake the following

day, we had enough treats to keep celebrating Caden’s birthday every night for a week!

On the 5th, we invited six of Caden’s friends—and their parents—over for a birthday brunch. It was really fun in a crazy toddler sort of way, with lots of running around, playing, eating goodies, reading books, and singing songs.

In the week or so leading up to his birthday, we asked Caden what he wanted to do on his birthday weekend, and his response was, invariably,

“Ride choo-choo Boston!” so on Sunday the 6th, we rode the T into Boston. Caden will happily tell you that he rode the blue train, the orange train, and the red train to go to the museum. We had a good time playing with bubbles, diggers, and slides at the Boston Childrens’ Museum. We headed home via the toy store, where we picked up a couple more special birthday gifts, including a really nice trike from Ama and Adad. Dada put the trike together a couple of days later, and Caden now says that he’s a “big kid” because he rides a bicycle.

Caden also says that he’s a big kid because he can open doors. Specifically, all of the doors in our hotel room in Providence, where we went for the annual Benthic Ecology Meeting, were lever knobs, which are easily opened by little guys like Caden. We spent four nights in Providence. Highlights included elevators; escalators; a great view of school busses, cars, and trucks on I-95; a tasty dinner with Heather, Jeremy, and Isaac; fun in the pool with Mae and Summer; and a new Thomas the Train set—a deliberately delayed birthday present—from Mama and Dada.