Celia’s hair growth has really started to take off, so a month or maybe two ago now, I took a picture of the back of her head to preserve her lovely swirl in the back. Now her hair at 19 months has grown into little ringlets in the back and side and the swirl has mostly disappeared. One of my favorite things to try to remember in my photography is to get the details, especially the fleeting ones like this.

On Josie’s birthday we had a full house with three extra guests in our little place! We woke up and had waffles for breakfast at home and my parents joined us too. We had the traditional whipped cream, strawberries, butter and syrup on them, fully loaded. Then we headed into present opening where Josie got to open her whole big pile of loot. She got a great well-rounded set of presents from books to art and dress up and our big present to her was a new big girl bicycle. I made her (yet another) cake for us to celebrate with, this time a layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

After some bike riding and playtime, Josie requested italien food for lunch, so we got some takeout from Sabatino’s.  And then we had a hasty cake and singing time as Javier and Bruna had to catch their flight back to Miami.

Celia I think was already napping by cake time, she was too tuckered out to make it. We said our goodbyes to Javier and Bruna and spent the lovely afternoon playing outside with my parents down at Waldo park and down on the bikes. Per Josie’s request I made lentil burritos for dinner and wished her a very happy birthday in the middle of dinner right at 6:39. More cake follows, boy we were full by the end of the day! It was a fun calmer day with us all at home relaxing and playing around the house with all the new fun toys.

Josie has been doing well with her new bike. No training wheels, she can ride across the basketball court and stop herself. Still working on getting going and she wants us to stay with her still too, but her balance bike has prepared her well. Celia has already claimed the balance bike well as hers and is trying really hard to master it already.

Josie’s party this year was the day before her actual birthday, with the usual party at my parents house with the bounce house, food and cake. Josie picked a theme of penguins and lollipops. I could not find penguin lollipops unfortunately so I went instead with making some cake pops that sort of looked like penguins. I am not terribly skilled with decorating confections, but I try. Josie thought they were pretty cute, but they seemed to be too sweet for the kids though several moms liked them. The girls and I had also made some paper penguins that we put on the walls and bought some big rainbow lollipops that we put out on the table.

We had a book exchange at the party which always produces the most amazing quiet calm time at a birthday party that I’ve ever seen!

Jordi’s mom had flown up that morning from Miami so she celebrated with us too.

I made some of my mom friends smile for a picture…

We had an art table. Interestingly enough, Celia was just wandering all over the party helping herself to whatever she wanted and doing whatever she wanted. She was completely comfortable which was pretty amusing and she’d just walk away from whoever was watching her quietly and swiftly until you’d turn around and have to find her again. She’d climb in the bounce house with the big kids, sit down and start drawing with markers at the table, and go help herself to some cheese.

At the end, they enjoyed the big lollipops.

Josie blew out her candles, after the wind blew them out first. [Photo credit to my mom as I was obviously not in a position to do this]

And then we sent them all home for their own dinner while we grabbed some pizza and soup even though we were all so stuffed from the party! But the partying didn’t end there… Sunday was her actual birthday and we started early.

Just before Josie’s birthday Jordi’s brother Javier and his girlfriend Bruna came to visit us. We tried to show them around town a little, took them to the Boston Common, got some dunkies coffee and went to the playground. We played around the fountain some and met up with Jordi for lunch at his company. Then Celia fell asleep on my back as we walked over through Faneuil hall and down to the carousel on the greenway. Josie got two spins around, once with Javi and once with Bruna before we walked over to the north end and got some cannolis from Mike’s Pastry. At that point we were pretty tired and headed for home, heading out again for a nice dinner at Punjab.

Josie wasn’t unhappy, I’m not sure what expression I caught there. Just ignore her.

It was fun to have some adult cooperative models for a change. But they both sure do blink a lot. They hung out with us until Sunday Josie’s actual birthday, celebrating at her party and on Sunday again with the family before they had to catch a plane back. They were great fun to have help play with the girls, and they all wore each other out! Late at night we also got to catch up a bit and chat which was fun.

About a month ago I found a recipe for some driveway paint and let the kids have at it. It was easy to mix, half water half cornstarch and while the mixture was a little odd, when poured on thick it went well onto the driveway and left some major fun colors! We even attracted all the neighboring kids to play with us too and paint. This week we bought three boxes of cornstarch to make more fun paint!

As I said, Celia’s got more words every day. Lately we hear a lot of MINE (or as she says mime). She’s also learned to say excuse me, somewhat in the proper context. Saturday night she wanted to get to her books and some toys were in the way so she repeatedly said excuse me while shoving them out of the way. I think she may have learned that ‘use’ of the word  from her sister.

Celia is coming up with new words every single day now. It’s great to understand what she’s trying to communicate to us. This week and over the trip we’ve heard
-breakfast
-chocolate
-zucchini
-Josie (soooo cute)
-brocolli
-hello
-hola
-hi

And this morning, I we heard STOP for the first time! Because Josie was squeezing her nose.

It has been a very quiet month here on the blog because we’ve had an extremely busy month! We had out of town company, Josie’s birthday and party and then we all tromped off to Europe for two weeks. We’re home now, still jetlagged, Celia woke up at 3am today, 1am yesterday, so we’re headed in the right direction. Here’s a photo while I try to get those posts all written, but we’ve been going to bed with the girls at 7pm so far, so no time yet! Local people – Josie could definitely use some play dates after two weeks with no playmates her age if you’re around!