The Birthday

The birthday celebrating has come to an end with the Well Child visit this morning. She was an angel and is developing beautifully. But it is no wonder our daughter doesn't fit clothes she is 75% for height and only 40% for weight, hard to believe that for much of the first year she was in the 90s for both.

We had a fun party at the park on Saturday afternoon with our friends. Mara loved playing with all her friends and finally got to taste the cake she had been talking about all week. Note, cupcake decorating was especially a hit with the three year olds. The picture on the left is Mara's reaction to the Happy Birthday song (also notice the candles had already blown out).

Mara is now the proud owner of a rocking chair like Mommy's that I am sure will see lots of use in the weeks to come, as well as, some great new books, art supplies and princess dress-up staples. It was amazing how much present opening had changed even since Christmastime. The funniest (for Mom and Dad) though was flip-flops from AK, there is a reason they don't sell them in 2 year old size I think. Unfortunately the video camera had a dead battery but this next series of pictures is in order. Notice how the putting on technique had to evolve.

A day at the aquarium

First the great ones.

Mara is checking out some star fish, which she thought were neat since she knows that shape. She was even brave and touched some later in the touch pools.


We got to watch some scuba divers in this tank. We watched them feed a big fish some small squid. Mara thought his flippers were mittens.


By this point she was tired of being in the dark and kept walking out of the exhibit. We only got her to watch the big shark tank for a few minutes and then only by pointing out the schools of small fish swimming around like "Swimmy" (a book she has recently taking a liking too).

Mara says enough pictures already.







And finally Pacific Grove to see the butterflies. We now believe that Aunt Heather isn't crazy after all, though we caught them in their last week and saw only a few thousand rather than the 19,000 we learned that there are at the peak around Thanksgiving.

If you give Mara a . . .

. . . new pretend play item and stick around for long, you'll probably end up going somewhere with us looking something like this!

Daddy the Magician

Mara was enamored by tricks like this for at least 20 minutes at the dinner table last night.

That was really fun

Maybe the beginning of a holiday tradition at the Hall house. I had a lot of fun constructing our gingerbread house from a kit this week during one of Mara's naps. Daddy and Mara had a great time decorating it at our Church Playgroup annual decorating event, though Tom required a little encouragement to let Mara participate (he had a lovely design in the works with "lights" outlining the roof line).

An Advent update

Father read in the gospel, "Amen, I say to you . . ." Mara proclaimed "A-min" and continued throughout the rest of Mass. You can't fault her for not listening that's for sure. She delights herself daily with getting baby Jesus out of the manager.


And the kiss:

Mara and the cereal bowl

When Mara first started eating solid food about a year ago Tom thought it was great that now there were always Cheerios in the house. I'm not sure he is still as thrilled about her love of them as she encroaches on his morning bowl more and more with each bite culminating in this: