Willa's second birthday

So it has taken me far too long to post this, but here are some pictures from Willa's second birthday party.

Since her favorite show is Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, it was an easy choice for the theme.  I had been planning this for about six months, and over the last three weeks I started assembling and hanging decorations.  I ordered the birthday cake and decided to buy a chicken nugget tray to save time, but other than that I put everything together with the help of Aunt Katie and Willa's godmother Sandi.  I particularly liked how cute the tiger balloons that Sandi made turned out!

Since I knew there would be about nine toddlers in attendance, I decided to arrange centers based on the various characters from the show.  That way, the kids could spread out and explore at their leisure without them necessarily grouping into an uncontrollable toddler melee.  It seemed to work very well!  The only center that didn't get a lot of attention was the coloring pages and the blocks.  The music and the cookie decorating were the biggest hits!

Such a beautiful day, and big thanks to Sandi for taking such amazing photographs!

Merry Christmas!

What a fun holiday we had this year!  Willa doesn't seem to yet understand Christmas enough to anticipate it and get excited, but she did like to tell any one that asked her that she would be asking for "Daniel Tiger toys!"  She didn't want to sit on Santa's lap yet, and in fact it took me 45 minutes to get her close enough to Santa to have her smiling in the same frame as him.  I brought all of my tricks, snacks, YouTube videos, Elmo toys, you name it.  Still she didn't want to do it.  I have the feeling that if I had just walked her in and said nothing she would have made her way over on her own, but the moment I asked her to and all three adults in the room were watching, it was too intense and she didn't want to.  Ah well.  This is the result, and lucky me, it's still very cute!

My parents and brother came to visit this year, and we had lots of fun with them in the days leading up to Christmas.  She helped Daddy and Papa make/decorate cookies, charmed everyone at church, and couldn't get enough of our tree.  I'm very proud of how gentle and careful she was with the tree, we were able to leave all the ornaments on it and she never got close to knocking it down.  No gates necessary, phew!

On Christmas morning she got right into the unwrapping process.  Santa probably should have taken the toys out of their boxes because we lost a lot of time in the dismantling of packaging process.  Lesson learned!  Here are the three videos we took that morning.  I love her reaction to seeing the toys in her stocking (ohhh!!!) as well as how quickly she thanked people for her gifts.  She truly is a kind hearted girl, how proud we are!

Overall we had a lovely time, and I'm sad to see the season pass.  Next up, Willa's birthday!

Maize Adventure

This past Sunday we took advantage of the beautiful Fall weather and took Willa to the Maize Adventure in High Point.  It's a lovely park with a giant corn maze, pumpkin patch, tractors, and a whole bunch of other stuff that will be more fun once Willa is older.  I think Willa enjoyed the pumpkin patch best, she seemed to love being able to just run and occasionally pet her favorite pumpkins.  She was also a trooper as we went through the corn maze, which was surprisingly challenging!  All of the older kids we saw were having a blast too, so I'm excited to bring her back when she can enjoy things like the jumping pillows, bungee jumpers, and gemstone mining zone.  We took way too many pictures, so enjoy!

Climbing every mountain

In the past few weeks, Willa has transformed from a girl content to play with just the mulch, avoiding all other elements of the playground at all costs, to one who will go on the slide as much as we let her!  In the span of about a half hour one day, when dark storm clouds loomed and limited our time in the park, Willa decided to try to climb the stairs up to the slide, and to slide by herself!  Thanks to the stairs in our house she mastered the stairs of the slide fairly quickly, but the transition from standing to sitting at the top of the slide was more difficult.  It took her a few tries to feel confident enough to drop to her bottom, and to figure out what to do with her feet.  I was pretty hands on during this time, but in only 30 minutes she (and I) had enough confidence for her to try it solo, and here is a video of the result!  Now, a week of daily park visits later, she is a champ and needs absolutely no help.  She even tries the bigger, twistier slide, and I am so proud!!  Go, Willa, go!!