Willa is really starting to get excited about holidays! To get ready for the holiday we started reading books about Easter and watching a couple of Easter DVDs from the library. She definitely wanted to dye eggs!
She was excited to color eggs and to wear a poofy dress, but I'm not sure she knew about the basket part. So it was lovely to see how happy she was to open her basket first thing in the morning.
The major themes were Doc McStuffins and Frozen, with a little Paw Patrol and Hello Kitty for good measure. She loved every piece and spent time enjoying each new thing. The only thing that didn't really get her attention was the candy, but it may be because we only got her some M'Ms and marshmallows.
We went to church as usual, where Willa got to do a basement egg hunt, thanks to the rainy weather. She was quite the little hunter, although we showed up late so she only got to hunt a little. Luckily, the organizers were very thoughtful and set up a few more eggs for her to hunt solo, so she didn't totally miss the fun.
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!
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!
