Elliot turns two

On Saturday we attended a birthday party for Liam's little swimming buddy, Elliot, shown here with her Dora cake (I'm glad I get to pick the cake theme for Liam this year, because I know by next year, he will have his own opinion about things, too!) These are all photos from the party - some of Liam's other little buddies.In other news, Liam is in the midst (I think) of dropping one of his naps, which he did yesterday, but he behaved pretty well at the party anyway (much to my surprise). He may or may not go to bed when I expect him to now, which means my beloved schedule, by which I have been able to set my watch for the last few months, is out the window.Chad spent Saturday morning & early afternoon installing baby gates. The first gate did not go back to the store, but found a home at the top of the basement stairs. There's a door down to the basement that we could keep closed, but then how would Captain get to the litter box in the furnace room?... well, we thought the gate would solve the problem, but so far Captain is refusing to jump it. He will jump it to go downstairs, but then refuses to come back up. This from the cat who never had a problem getting on top of our upper kitchen cabinets (before we remodelled the kitchen and ran them all the way to the ceiling... I still feel bad for doing it). We found him sitting on the basement side of the gate when we came home from our party, wailing pitifully for a rescue.We wound up installing a strip of MDF to the top spindle of the staircase in order to attach the gate to it. Not the prettiest fix, but one that works, and I'll paint it to match the spindles this week which will help things at least a little. (Baby gates are pretty ugly anyway - and big - you are never really going to be able to hide the fact that they're there...) (Mandy, I did take a look at One Step Ahead, but the idea of shipping a large item like a gate internationally makes me cringe!! Paying more for the shipping than the cost of the item itself always makes me feel like a sucker... this is one of those situations where living an hour south of where I do would come in awfully handy...)