Stroller Cruelty

Aurora loves to push her own stroller around. Except when she's been walking for MILES- then she gets hungry and cranky, like in this photo.

We're so cruel to make her push the stroller ALL the way to the estate sale and then ALL the way back.

A Complete Easter Breakfast

Here is Aurora, toast and egg in hand, posing at our house during our easter egg hunt.

I punched up the colors in this photo- look how green the grass is! It really brings out her blue eyes and red hair, too.

That's me in the background, fooling with my phone.

Eggs and Bunnies and Ham, oh my!

What an exciting weekend we had! Aurora and Arlo helped me cook for the two Easter dinners we attended, to start. Here they are on Saturday, Arlo taking a break from stirring the chocolate cake batter to help Aurora stir her deviled egg mixture.

We went to Cousin Amy and Emma's house on Saturday for pre-Easter lunch. Amy's fiance Matt hid 250 candy-filled eggs throughout their house for the 7 kids to find. My camera is too slow to capture running and screaming, but here's one of Aurora sniffing the scented candles on Amy's front porch.

James and Cousin Jen had us over for dinner on Sunday, where we had honeybaked ham and cheesy potatoes and fresh, tender asparagus. The Easter bunny hid eggs from our house and theirs in their large yard, and boy was Lily excited about it! Aurora was happy to eat the egg she found (and the "ball" yolk), and Arlo was relieved that the Easter bunny hid eggs at our house AND there. Oh, the magic of the Easter bunny! And the deliciousness of HAM. Something for everyone, thank goodness!

More Children's Museum

Here are two more shots of smacky at the Children's Museum on Monday. She's checking out the fish in the top one and running to the treehouse in the bottom one. I would love to have a large enough house to have more fun things for Aurora and Arlo to do, or have some carpenter skills to build a play structure in the backyard (or $2000 to buy one!). Luckily there's the cultural pass from the Lake Oswego Library so we can go to the Children's Museum for free whenever we want.

Children's Museum

Aurora and I spent the afternoon at the Children's Museum yesterday. Ordinarily I would never set foot in a place that would be so overrun with children, but I thought it would be nice for Aurora.

Wow, it was great! I think it's not so great for bigger kids (or parents when it's very busy), but she's almost to the perfect age for it. We played with clay, she played in the water tubs, she dug in the rubber "dirt" in the dig pit, and she got to hang around a lot of other little ones. We also had a fun time in the treehouse.

Here she is in the baby area, painting some water in a trickling water feature.

Bedtime Snack

Here is Aurora last week, drinking milk in bed. We've been trying to run her around out after dinner, either at the park, the playground or on a walk, to help her go to sleep sooner at night and also have some fun and exercise.

She always wants her mimi before bed, though (and several times at night, too, dammit!). Here she is, having a bottle before I could wrestle her into her diaper and jammies.

Cupcakes and New Words

Cupcakes were our amusement this weekend when cousins Jennifer, Lily and James visited. Arlo mixed up some very nice orange frosting to go with our chocolate, Lily made some nice blue frosting, and Jen tinted coconut green.

Aurora only had the choice of chocolate but she got down and dirty with the rest of us (probably a little more dirty) and enjoyed her dessert very much.

"Noy?" she'll say when she sees this photo with her nose covered in frosting. After a few minutes in the garden this weekend she can now say weed ("wee"). Other new words are nine (fairly accurate as nine) and yowl, her name for Mithra. (Which is also fairly accurate; I've never heard a cat yowl as lustily as Mithra does.) She tried seaweed last night but it came out as WEEwee, a good try but just not there yet. Oh, and sssss for snake.