After going round and round about what to do for Noah's 2nd birthday we settled on a small family affair. Wanda did a little party at daycare with cupcakes and singing so we figured he got a "friend" party already. The loot at his 1st birthday was insane so we didn't want a repeat of that (50+ people?!) given that this was the first year that he was going to really understand what this whole birthday thing was all about. As it was, even with a small group he got a ridiculous amount of presents.
Noah's all about the choo choo so clearly we had our theme for the day. We started out with a brisk morning ride on the steam train in Tilden park. Noah had developed a wee bit of a cough so we kept it short with just one ride. Amazingly he was okay with this. While he napped we put together his cake (a train), decorated the place (with trains) and put out his new train board in anticipation of all of the train related goodies he was going to get. Instead of buying him a train table or board Jeremy and I made a train board for him. We made it larger than store bought ones and even painted the island of Sodor on it for him. (Wikipedia is amazing!). When Noah woke up he was excited to see everything and even said, "wow" when he saw his cake (which 
made it all worthwhile for me). We spent the afternoon eating cake (he had 2 slices), opening presents and building track. He loved everything and mostly remembered to say, "tank ew". It was fun to see him get the hang of the whole present thing. He started out so tentative, but was pro by the end of the day tearing into presents quickly and excitedly.After bath time he asked for "more birthday?" and cried when he realized it was all over.
