Musical Extravaganza

Yesterday Lillian's daycare put on an Africa themed musical extravaganza. The kids have been busy preparing for the performance for a few weeks now and they were excited to strut their stuff in front of a room full of eager parents. Lillian was a little shy at first, especially during the Russian numbers. But by the time they got to Row, Row, Row Your Boat, she really got into it.

Tiger Lillian before the big show.


Some very enthuiastic boat rowing with her friend Taya.

Alara's Birthday

This Saturday was Alara's Birthday party. It was quite an event, complete with a pinata, face painting, ice-cream cake, and lots of time running around with all of Lillian's favorite little people. After the first girl to get her face painted got a butterfly, everyone else wanted a butterfly on their face too. Soon there was a whole gaggle of cute butterfly girls running around. After the party Lillian went over to her friend Jessie's house while her parents enjoyed an evening out on the town. Between the afternoon full of birthday party and the excitement of hanging out with Jessie in the evening, Lillian was pooped and ready for bed.

The butterfly girls, Lillian, Emile and Ellie.

Child Labor

In an effort to get back to our usual routine, we visited Full Circle Farm this afternoon. We haven't been able to make it to the farm in a few weeks, and boy have things grown! The corn plants that were only a few feet high are now huge and sprouting big ears of corn. The farmer let us try some raw corn fresh off the plant and boy was it sweet and delicious. So much so that Lillian ate two whole ears of it before we even left the farm. We also brought home a few ears to boil up with dinner. After shucking two ears at the farm, Lillian is now an expert and shucked the four ears for dinner all by herself.

Back to the Park

The past couple of weeks have been busy with holidays and travel, so we have missed out on two weeks of our regular Monday park play-date with our friends. Today we made up for lost park time by spending five solid hours hanging out at the park. Lillian was thrilled to see all of her favorite little people and even managed to make a few new friends along the way. I should also mention that today she was not our usual Lillian self but a baby bird, complete with wings. Sure the wings are fairy wings (and last night when she put them on she was "Little Kid Fairy") but today they were bird wings. Lillian has taken to pretending to be a bird, and her friend Jessie loves to play right along. Just the other day we were puzzled to see Jessie sitting on top of Lillian only to hear that Jessie was sitting on-top of Lillian in an effort to "hatch" her into a baby little bird. The pretend play is pretty cute and very entertaining for all involved.

Lillian shows off her birdie wings.

Lillian bird and Jessie bird sitting in the tree, because that's what birds do.

Klaus's House

This past weekend we visited our dear friends Ryan and Joanna and their son Klaus. They are living in Santa Monica while Joanna is on sabbatical from her professorship at Texas A&M. Since the sabbatical is about to end and they will be returning to Texas at the end of the month we decided that we should try to squeeze in a little visit while they are still living in California. The visit involved a 5 hour drive each way but Lillian was a trouper and sat patiently in her car seat for the long boring drive down the I-5, looking out the window and listening to stories on CD.

Lillian and Klaus go way back, and even though we rarely get to visit, they are always delighted to see one and other. The last time we saw Klaus, he and Lillian clicked instantly and ran off to play with little supervision necessary, the same was true with this visit. The two immediately ran off and starting having cute a toddler sized discussion about all sorts of important things.

While in Santa Monica we also visited with Lillian's Auntie Erin and had the opportunity to attend her boyfriend Preston's birthday bash. We also got to see some of the sights around Santa Monica and Eat some truly outstanding food.

Enjoying a frosty beverage while driving through the scorching San Joaquin Valley on our way to Santa Monica.

Lillian and Klaus riding the Big Blue Bus.

Lillian at the playground next to the Santa Monica Pier while we waited for the historic carousel to open.

Waiting for her yogurt at Pinkberry at the Third Street Promenade.

Klaus, being one smart cookie, is already able to read at age 3 1/2, this made bedtime even easier since Klaus can read bedtime stories to Lillian.