Our Fish Baby

It's a fish, it's a mermaid, it's Lillian!  She absolutely LOVES the water now and gets more and more confident every time she swims.  She kicks and uses her arms now when she swims.  She even voluntarily jumps towards you..... of course it always takes a little time at the beginning during every swim session but once she's in and wet fully she just becomes like a little fish.  I tried to take some pictures of her using an underwater camera.  It was a bit difficult but I got some good shots.  

Halloween

Lillian is a Kangaroo this year for Halloween! We have been to the pumpkin patch countless times, she even knows the words now and she has had a blast this year! This past weekend we even went trick or treating in Seaport Village; they give out candy at the shops during a designated time frame and the kids go wild.  Today was the first day she learned about candy, she kept asking to eat it.  Luckily we held her off most of the time and gave her a bite here or there.  It will be interesting to see how trick or treating goes on Wednesday, Halloween day!  I read in the San Diego Family Magazine there is a place we can take the candy and get money for it.  All the candy we turn in will be sent to the soldiers overseas.  We may not take part this year but I know we will do it in the coming years.  We don't really need all that candy in our house, Lillian doesn't need it and it will help her learn how to give to others (although you can argue the soldiers don't need it either!)..... one step at a time ;)

Happy Birthday Lillian!

 

We celebrated Lillian's 2nd birthday doing things she enjoys.  We rode the Amtrak train up to Anaheim (she loves anything trains so getting to ride one is special!) had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney and walked around the shops.  We thought the Rainforest Cafe would be fun since she likes the zoo and she liked the moving animals at a restaurant back in Maryland called Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse; they had forest animals that would go off.  Lillian enjoyed looking at the animals in the Rainforest Cafe but she wasn't too thrilled when they moved around.  It could have been because they placed us right next to the loudest and scariest animal in my opinion, the gorilla.  When they went to seat us I debated requesting a different seat but didn't speak up.  The gorilla went off every 15 min and actually sounded pretty angry, on tops of that it would "storm" rain and thunder every 30 min so the second time the gorilla went off it was very loud and Lillian lost it! Greg took her outside to calm her down but she wouldn't sit in her seat for the remainder of the meal.  The only way we got her to eat was sitting on Greg's lap turned away from the gorilla so she couldn't see him when we went off.  After that, we walked around downtown Disney and the shops, and to my surprise out of everything in the Disney store she could have grabbed or gone wild about, she chose a Finding Nemo book.   She really is a big book lover!  

We had a great birthday celebration so far and it will continue with Auntie Jan and Uncle Dana this weekend as we head off to the zoo and resume again the following week when Mimi and Papa are here to visit.  We have lots of things planed for their visit, with a trip to the zoo, pumpkin patch and beach so stay tuned for more updates!

Here is a slideshow of birthday pictures along with a little video while she enjoyed her cupcake.  Last year she wasn't sure about it but this year I think she would have made a BIG mess had we let her, she loved the cupcake and was ready to go at it! The video is the first couple bites.