Costume Changes

Lillian's favorite game these days is dress-up, so our days involve frequent costume changes. She also relishes the opportunity to go over to her friends houses and try all their fun costumes. Today, we started in a regular dress, then into a ballerina costume moved on to the fancy princess dress that Grammy made, then back into her regular dress, off to Jessie's house where she went through several more costume changes including a tinker-bell outfit, a fairy dress, and a fancy ladybug costume. This girl sure loves getting fancy!

Let the Birthday's Begin

Last weekend marked the beginning of "Birthday Season" for Lillian's group of friends. Since most of her friends are around he same age, their birthdays tend to clump together in the springtime leading to a party-paloza that starts in January and stretches into early summer. This was Deanna's big day complete with pinata, cake and lots of good times had by all.

Lillian skates all by herself

Lillian's made a lot of progress since we started ice skating again this year. This past time she was really determined to skate all by herself like the big kids. Here is a short video of her skating all by herself.

Sillman Swim Center

This afternoon, was yet another in a series of cold dreary days here in Northern California that left all of us longing for the warm, sunny days of summer. So in an effort to have some fun and stay warm we headed to the nearby but rather obscure city of Newark CA*. Newark is home to the Sillman Aquatic Center which features a water-park like series of three huge indoor pools with play-structures, fountains, and water slides. We had been once before and Lillian was very excited to be going again. The kiddie pool with it's huge play structure was a big hit, although later in the day Lillian gravitated to the "deep end" which is three feet deep, she figured out that with a series of toe taps and hand splashes she could keep her head just barley above the water.

*The less well known but equally fragrant West Coast extension of everyone's favorite New Jersey suburb...

Christmas 2010

We're back from our yearly Christmas trip to visit Grammy and Pop-Pop's house in Phoenix. Lillian was a trooper for the trip, even though our flight was delayed 2 hours. Now that she can be reasoned with and has taken an interest in electronic entertainment, those hours in the airport pass quite smoothly (she can be seen watching Eric play Plants vs. Zombies in one of the pictures below).

There was a lot of family around to dote on Lillian in Phoenix, including Great-Grandma Nora and "cousins" Josh and Zack. Lillian also enjoyed spending lots of quality time with her Grammy and Pop-Pop including a visit to the Phoenix Children's Museum, and a ride on the Adobe Western Railway. Grammy and Lillian worked together and made Lillian a very special princess dress exactly the way she wanted it, and she debuted it at Grammy's New Year's party.

When she wasn't out having adventures with the relatives, she was making bead necklaces for everyone (using beads salvaged from Tom's old car seat cover). It took some convincing to get her to make one for Pop-pop and Preston, as she claimed that "Boys don't wear necklaces. Daddy doesn't even get one."

Thanks to Pop-Pop for providing the pictures since we were so lazy we didn't take a single picture the whole trip.

Caged Beasts

Things got a little wild at our holiday gift exchange and somehow four of the girls ended up in the dog cage. Lillian decided to take the metaphor one step further by chewing on the dog bone. Photo courtesy of Santosh at Baby Greene.