It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Leo!

Our little Leo just turned "fthfree". That chubby little guy that didn't bother crawling until 11 months.

Didn't bother walking until 14 months.

And is now running away from us as fast as his little legs will take him. Literally. He thinks it's pretty darn funny to run down the entire length of our street 5 or 6 times a day laughing and yelling, "mommy! mommy! catch me!" Hilarious.

And of course, he's usually wearing a cape.

Which is why we decided to embrace Leo's inner-Super and throw him a Superhero party.

If you know me well, you know that I get really great ideas the night before some big event, and I'm up until all hours of the night (let's be honest - morning) carrying out my spontaneous- albeit genius- plans. With Leo's party, I actually started an entire week before the big day. Unfortunately, with all that extra time I had, my plans got more and more involved each day. But man, was it worth it.

To see this:

And this:

And this:

We invited all of Leo's cousins that live in Salt Lake, and since there are only six, I decided to make capes for them and Paul made the masks.

We wanted to make sure Leo felt extra special, so Paul designed a Super Leo logo and I made him a birthday t-shirt. We were really pleased with the way it turned out, and more importantly, so was Leo.

I had a pretty good idea to set up a photo booth for the kids to show off their capes, and then Paul had the genius idea to turn my boring photo booth into the next-best-thing to Dave Eggers' flying booth at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store (for those of you who aren't familiar, you should really check it out next time you're in NYC. It'll be well worth your while).

Here are some scenes of the Little Supers making their flying debut:

After flying lessons, we headed upstairs to refuel on some sugar and snacks.

How else do you think Supers maintain such a high energy level??

Thanks to more-than-generous cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents, Leo made out like a bandit with gifts. Unfortunately, once he got Thor from his grandma, he didn't really seem to notice any of the other gifts.

Correction: Anything else at all.

It was a great day. Leo was happy and so were we. Even Penny found a new favorite thing.

It's so much fun to celebrate our little ones in a big way. On the hard days, I have to remind myself that they won't be little forever, and I'll most likely miss it like crazy.

I'd be crazy not to.

Happy birthday, Leo. We love you, our funny little dude.

*Thanks to Grandpa Ted for taking all the birthday photos!

Breakfast With Buzz

I've heard rumors that, for a few dollars more, when you go to Disneyland, your daughter can have a tea party or brunch or elevensies with the Disney Princesses. While that's just one of the 5,994 reasons having a daughter scares me to death and while I would see a lot more logic in having lunch with, say, Mr. Incredible or Wall-E, the real reason I bring this up is because at our house– to quote my friend and fair-to-middling musician Tilby– "we saved a step." Who needs Disneyland when you can have BREAKFAST WITH BUZZ in your very own kitchen? On your birthday, no less. And there are no other smelly brats with their cotton candy fingers, runny noses, and RSV.

So here is the Zinho having a private breakfast with his pal Buzz. I took too many pictures. But that's what you're here for, right? Not the wordy intros. That's for sure.

Buzz provides some festive candles. Leo takes a swig to pretend he's not stoked out of his mind.

Feeling comfortable, Leo decides to share some of his meal with Buzz.

True friends can have unawkward silence.

"Are you INSANE?!?"

Leo gets a little adversarial when Buzz mentions

that he actually doesn't mind Carmelo Anthony.

The Larry Bird Year

It's somebody's birthday. (Hint: not the dashing fellow in the photo.) So, like any hack writer worth his weight in cliches, I thought about cranking out some snappy little essay like maybe "(Number Here) Things I Love About Holly" or even "(Number Here) Holly Photos" or something equally mind-blowing. What you call lazy, I call tasteful. Instead, I simply wish the Happiest Larry Bird Year (either you have a Bird Year or a Kareem Abdul Jabbar Year. There's no in-between.) In The History Of Mankind, Documented and Undocumented to my favorite person in the world. And give you a few photos, over the years, that don't add up to (Number Here).