Riding in the red car with the lovey family

just a typical morning in Lily's house!

It's just possible that we may hit the McDonalds drive-thru a bit too often, though...

More Lily swims

Courtesy of guest videographer Toto Kevin.

In case you're wondering what she was trying to do, she tries to drink from the spray of the super soaker. That sometimes doesn't play out so well for her, but she's very determined.

Lily swims!

Admittedly, it's in a floaty suit, but she's cruisin' pretty darn good!

What's gonna work?

Lily and her cousins sing Lily's favorite song during our Cape Cod vacation

Uh oh

I get the feeling Lily's days of staying put in the crib may be numbered...

Karate Kids

All the kiddies were kung-fu fighting
Those kids are fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightening
But they fought with expert timing

There was funky Andy-roo and big sister Molly too

They said, "look, here comes Lily, let's all head off to the loo"

Andy-roo, as you can see, tried to do a little pee

Lily hopped onto the can, started swinging with the hand

They were funky kung-fu kids from San Diego town
They were hopping on the bed (though Lily was falling down)

Their kimonos were real cute, we liked Molly's tutu too

Dada tried to play along, but he looked a little wrong

All the kiddies were kung-fu fighting

Those kids were fast as lightning

In fact it was a little bit frightening

But they fought with expert timing

Chez Pinklet

Just a bit of random fun...on Fathers Day, Lily helped mama make scones for dada.

Yummers!

Zonky

Taken surreptitiously at Lily's daycare...

She's a pretty poor napper at home, much to her parents exasperation, but at school she's a champ, turning in 2-3 hr snoozes on a regular basis. I like this picture because it looks like she just dropped in her tracks. "Naptime!"

Let's start at the very beginning...

It'a a very good place to start.



When you read you begin with A-B-C,



When you sing, you begin with...

A message for Po Po and Gung Gung

Lily has something to say:

Goodnight Moon

Missed a bit, but all in all, pretty good!

Follow the leader

So this weekend, after we posted the Gettysburg address vids, we checked in with the grandmas to see if they'd seen it. One said yes, she'd seen it because she checked the blog every day (even though I haven't updated in nearly 2 months), and the other grandma said no, she didn't look because there hadn't been anything new in so long.



Both comments made me feel guilty, so I'm gonna try and post little fun bits more frequently rather than go months between high-content posts. So here's a bit of fun from Po Po and Gung Gung's visit last month (which I should post about in detail but there you go...): Lily taking Gung Gung for walkies.

The Gettysburg Address

Lily's in this big parroting phase lately, so last night, on a lark, we tried seeing if we could get her to repeat the Gettysburg Address. Much to our suprise, she made it as far as "conceived in liberty" before losing interest.

So today we gave it another shot. Let's see how she does:

Hm, that was not terribly successful. Let's try again:

So close! One more try...

Yay Lily!

Who's two? Lily, that's who! Part 2

Sigh. In part one, I bragged that I was doing such a good job being prompt at posting the birthday stuff, but here we are again in April. So I figure, I GOTTA get the rest up before May! No time to waste, on with the blog!

OK, where was I? Oh yeah, the slide! If you recall, when Lily first saw the slide from Po Po and Gung Gung, she wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But Molly and Andy-roo knew just what to do! Can they teach Lily? Let's see:

Yep, looks like she figured it out. Maybe a little too well! For the most part, she has not made a habit of that headfirst thing, much to dada's relief. But the slide continues to be a big hit, especially when we have other kiddies over for parties. They think it's a great novelty. Apparently, it's unusual to have a slide in your parents' bedroom? Go figure.

That video was actually filmed on her birthday and the day after, when we had her big party, so I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. For the party theme, we of course chose Wonder Pets. Dada was able to find a website with all sorts of Pets-themed stuff. Plates, tablecloths, napkins, favors, and, of course, balloons.

Here you see Toto Kevin helping with the balloons. I think we had enough. In fact, we still keep finding them around the house.

The party itself was just delightful. All of the Mojica clan came down, and most of them slept over! And of course, Lily's San Diego peeps were well represented.

This party was also notable in that this seemed to be the party where the kids all REALLY discovered the yard.

For example, here's Clara in the playhouse.

Mallory discovers the back alley.

Madi discovers her inner diva.

Andy and Molly discover the upper slope.

However, in the process, Andy appears to have lost his pants.

So it was great fun having all the kiddies run around! Unfortunately, like last year I didn't get to take a lot of pictures because of needing to wrangle food, drinks and kids. We did to make sure to break out the cameras for pinata time, though! Of course, it was a Pets pinata...semi-homemade because dada messed up the order from the party supply place. No pinata, but about a million extra pairs of yellow binoculars party favors. Oops! This year, we decided not to have the kids try and smash the pinata because a) only the really big kids are strong enough and coordinated enough to damage a pinata, but b) almost all the kids are strong enough to damage me. So we decided to pull the ribbons instead.

Birthday girl gets the first ribbon. No luck, though!

Clara gives it a try. Lucas grabs what looks like a fistful. Molly and Andy try, Andy still pantless. Max even has his daddy helping, to no avail.

Mitchell and Mallory both strike out. Erica helps Alex take her turn, while Lucas sneaks back in for another try, but nothing doing.

Finally big kid Natalia takes matters into her own hands. It's almost as if she knows what to look for...but in any case, the feeding frenzy commences.

After candy, what could be better than cake? Wonder Pets cake on a Wonder Pets tablecloth, of course. (Incidentally, we also kept the tablecloth on the kitchen island for like two months, just 'cause it was so darn Pets-y. Besides, it went with the Wonder Pets paper plates and cups we had left over)

Time to sing again! Will Lily still be intimidated by her candle like she was with the cupcake? Let's see...

Yep, still a bit intimidated. Good thing Madi and Lucas were there to help. And Lucas was so enthusiastic! "CUT THE CAKE!!"

Later, after the formal festivities ended, we settled down and hung out with just the family. As an added bonus, they stayed the night, so we got to spend time the next day too! We partly spent the time opening some presents, but mostly just enjoyed each others' company.

Ain't them girls cute?

Lily and Mal compare notes on how to sit on the floor, as Lily demonstrates a flawless reverse indian style. Little kids are bendy.

Whee, mama!

Such fun! But all good things must eventually come to an end. Besides, after so much activity Lily was plumb tuckered out! A little game for our readers: can you find Lily crashed out in the aftermath of her birthday weekend?

And that's it! Happy birthday to my big girl.

Ashiatsu

Ahh, massage...

Audience participation

It was a bit difficult to capture this video because of Lily's tendency to say "cheese" everytime the camera comes out, but I was able to sneak a little of her watching a Wonder Pets episode on my laptop:

Yeah. She pretty much has every episode memorized. This is probably not a very good reflection on her parents in terms of limiting her TV watching. On the plus side, at least she's an active listener...

Who's two? Lily, that's who! Part 1

Last year, it took me until April to get around to blogging Lily's birthday. This year I'm trying to be a lot more prompt! So without further ado, here we go.

Just to start things off right, mama stuck around a bit later than usual before going to work so she could wish her baby happy birthday. Let's see how that went:

Yep, Lily still says "cheese" to the video camera. Ah, well! But moving on: one of her big presents (from Po Po and Gung Gung) was her very own slide. Long time readers of the blog know that Lily is usually quite fond of slides, so mama and dada stealthily put it together the night before and put it in their bedroom (temporarily, Pinky insists!) so Lily could play without consideration for daylight or weather. We were very excited for what we expected to be a very enthusiastic response from our two-year-old girl. Shall we take a look?

Hmf. Not exactly the reception we were hoping for! Well, she WAS still sleepy, and she certainly does love her Wonder Pets...tell you what, Lily, we'll watch some Pets, run you off to daycare and try again later.

When we all got home later that evening, we had a nice surprise: Lily's babysitter Katharine had gotten her some very sweet presents! There were these very cute kiddie dishes , including these cool cups that have water and little floaty decorations between the outer and inner layer. This inspired mama, dada and Lily to a round of birthday toasts:

Did you catch Lily saying "birthday" at the end? They must have worked on that with her at daycare because she was saying it over and over. So cute! That was the only one I caught on video, unfortunately.

Drink up, Lily!

Since Lily's actual birthday fell on Friday, we didn't have her official party until the next day, but we did invite Aunty Chelle, Uncle Charlie, BFF Molly and boyfriend Andy-roo over for dinner and play. Molly and Andy-roo helped Lily get more acclimated to her new slide (more on that later), we had a very nice meal together, and of course, we had to sing Happy Birthday to Lily and give her a "cake" (OK, cupcake for now) and candles to blow out. Hm, I wonder how she'll feel about candles?

Oh, well...maybe we'll have better luck at her party! We'll continue that in the next post.

Cheese!

Just a bit of fun while I work on the birthday party mega-post:

apparently, we have trained her to say "cheese" when she sees any sort of camera...

Festival of Lights (nice nice kitty...)

A few days after Christmas, we stopped by the Wild Animal Park to see the Festival of Lights., where they do up the park with all these christmassy and animal-themed light sculptures. We figured Lily would like that, but what we were REALLY excited about what that they advertised having a real snow sledding hill. Snow!! Lily has never in your young life seen snow, so we figured this would be pretty neat.

Unfortunately, the hill itself was a bit underwhelming. More like Sno(tm) than snow (as in Sno-Cones? Get it? Heh...ok, moving on...). Nonetheless, mama gamely takes Lily on her fist sled ride. Whee!

Since we were already there, we figured we'd walk around a bit and see the lights, maybe see an animal or two. Here you see Pinky and Lily with a OH MY GOSH LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!! GIANT FEROCIOUS CARNIVORE!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES...oh, wait, it's behind glass, false alarm.

This was actually the coolest thing we saw that night in my opinion. All three lions were hanging out right by the glass (they heat the rocks at night there, so it's a favorite spot).

One challenged Lily to a starting contest, but as you can see, was quickly cowed by her steely glare.

Next year, they'll be moving the festival to the Zoo instead of the Wild Animal park, so we're glad we got to see it. Very cool!

The Disney mega-movie post

The day after we got back from Aspen, we decided to take Lily on her very first trip to Disneyland! Accompanied by Tata Rina, Toto Tom, and cousins Madi and Mallory, we spent the day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Or as I like to call it, based on Lily's reaction, the Ambivalentest Place on earth.

As it happens, thanks to the heavy use it got the previous few days in Aspen, our digital camera was nearly out of batteries, so we have relatively few pictures. However, we DID have the video camera, so this is gonna be a video-heavy post. Here goes!

First stop was the famous teacups. As you can see, Lily is somewhat less than enthusiastic.

Next was the train. Lily maintains her poker face quite nicely!

The Dumbo ride. Is it just me, or is Lily actually starting to look a bit pissed off?

Meeting Mickey Mouse. You know, I think Mickey is probably accustomed to a slightly more enthusiastic reaction...

In fairness to Lily, she WAS jet-lagged, and had a short night to boot. But finally, in ToonTown, we found something that she could get excited about:

Hm. Maybe this IS the Happiest Place on Earth after all! Whee!!