Last October we had Celia’s first birthday party! It was one of our typical bashes in my parents backyard, although we tried to keep it a bit smaller. We were lucky to be joined by Jordi’s mom, maternal grandmother, aunt and uncle who came to Boston to celebrate with us! We bounced, ate, drank and ran inside for cake as it started to storm a tiny bit. Celia mostly just did her own thing, played with the balls, slid down the slide and did some bouncing. Not too aware of the friends around her yet.

I made carrot cake cupcakes, but as Celia hadn’t had dairy yet we just gave her a vegan one from Quebrada. She was not very interested. She was more intimidated by the huge number of people looking at her and singing. She did try to feed me some though. A few nights later when presented with another of the same cupcakes she was much more interested in digging in the second time.

All the kids as usual love the bounce house. We had to have separate baby and big kid times though as 3-6 year olds and new walkers don’t mix so well together.

The next day she had a bash opening her presents. And as usual, she loved the thing the stuff came in…

I like how his head blocks the light on the wall a little behind him. I don’t like how he works late at night often.

We got a big box from amazon, with diapers in it. Who needs fancy toys? this gave hours of fun.

Oh and we rearranged the living room because it’s been over three years without anything moving. Might have had a little to do with me wanting to have better light where the girls play for taking pictures too.

We’ve had an incredibly warm March and winter here in Boston this year. A few weeks ago we got fantastic weather and so I invited friends to a nearby park to play and let me take their picture. We brought some balloons because I wanted to have some fun photos with them, which didn’t quite work out according to plan. We lost half of them 30 minutes or so into playtime as they came untied from the weight they were attached to, which was a BIG TRAGEDY for the three year olds. It was this set of photographs that made me convinced something was wrong with my camera too, as I was focusing behind adults sitting still and not getting the results I was careful to make sure it was set up to do. So the photos are a bit soft sadly, but I like a bunch of them still and enjoyed playing with the light and shadows!

Josie has a new sentence structure now, which is “When I have kids…”. Apparently she doesn’t agree with all of my parenting choices. Just recently she declared:

• Her kids will be allowed to eat as many cookies as they want
• Her kids will be allowed to have as many (fake) tattoos as they want

Last year for his birthday (in Feb) I got Jordi red sox tickets, for September. Just how the schedule worked out. We all went and so Josie and Celia saw their first red sox game in Fenway Park! The game was LONG and the girls carried on through it, eating, drinking, people watching, and cringing at the drunk guys behind us yelling. How is it that the people behind us are always drunk yelling guys? Must be a lot of them at Fenway. Josie got a new hat. Our team lost, painfully. But at the end we snuck down to the good seats and got an up close view of them losing. It’s still so awesome how the park is so small and close up, even if we are in the cheaper seats! I don’t think we’ll bring the girls again for a while as it was just too long for them but the weather cooperated and we had fun.

over the shopping cart color at the grocery store. Celia wanted pink, Josie wanted red. It was Josie’s turn so we went with red, but Celia literally stood up in the pink one and tried to cross over to the other one while they were next to each other!

Celia is currently packing her sister into a shipping box that just arrived and saying ‘yummy yummy yummy’…

And we’re all still sick. Jordi even took a half day at work today since we’re feeling so crummy.

To continue with my super-late posts… We went to Cape Cod last summer too! With my parents, and Christina and family joined us for half the week too. We rented the same house with the pool on the lower cape and had a blast swimming and enjoying the outdoors. Right before this trip I just got my 35mm lens which was super fun as the house had a lot of light for taking some decent pictures. I shot over 1000 photos that trip through the week. Now I’d like to think I could do a better job this year but some of these weren’t too bad.

We did our usual fun things. Swim in the pool, go to the beach, flew the kites, go to a baseball game, and eat lots of ice cream. Sadly I really do need to write these posts more quickly because now I’ve forgotten most of the details. I do remember Celia constantly walking off with people’s shoes. The flies were bad this year on the south cape beach, we couldn’t even eat on the beach unless we were in the tent or in the water, the previous year it had been the seaweed. Both years going to Old Silver Beach proved to be a good choice! I’ll let the photos do most of the talking… we had good clean fun and it was nice how the kids enjoyed each other!

I enjoyed getting to photograph my parents, as they follow directions much better than my children!

So I’m way behind with several fun things we’ve been doing over the year. One of which was going to Storyland last summer! It’s now so late that we are already planning our trip for this next summer! Last year when we went, Celia was just starting to walk and was still taking two naps. We went with our friends and neighbors Christina, Chanh, Ethan and Zach and another family of friends too. Ethan was big enough to go on all the rides but Josie and Zach weren’t yet. We drove down, stopped at Panera and played in the grass after eating. I snapped one of these photos that somehow I keep taking, Josie has a habit of grabbing Celia around the neck.

The first ride we got on was a variation of the tea cups. Josie was not experienced with those kinds of rides and so she neglected to let go of the center spinner and go dragged around the circle. Not the best of beginnings but after she dusted herself off we were on our way to find some more rides including the polar coaster (an artic themed roller coaster).

Celia spent a lot of time in the stroller taking in all the people and sounds of the area. She loved a little clock in the middle of a garden and the milk-able cow. One fun spot was this indoor place that had balls flinging all over, falling from the ceiling through tubes and vacuums.

It is a very small-child oriented park, at the beginning of every ride they tell you to give a ‘thumbs down’ if you want the ride to stop. The most intense one where I almost stuck out my thumb for Josie was the spinning turtles. The green on Josie’s face was a color cast from the ride, but she was a little overwhelmed.

Josie was pretty excited all day and it was nice to get big smiles like this!

A big highlight for Josie was meeting Cinderella. The castle was sadly dark and horribly lit for photos, which is odd considering the castle is nothing BUT a photo opportunity place. Josie has said her current career aspiration is to be Cinderella at Storyland when she grows up, telling people that the park is going to close at 5:45 every night and taking pictures with little kids. She also plans to market and sell a pillow with her picture on it, one set with her as a little girl (aka now) and one as a grown up. These business plans have been a recent development.

We also got Josie’s face painted, which we won’t be doing again, at least to that extent. It was a neat face design and she even waited pretty well in a long hot line to get painted. But it got into her eyes and it was a big crying mess to clean her up that night. Here she is with her tiger face paint milking the pretend cow.

I can’t believe how little Celia was last year compared to now, she’s grown so much so fast. Celia spent a lot of time in the carrier watching everything going by, like in this photo on the train. I think she’s going to be overjoyed to go this year and see everything!

It was a great trip, other than the ride up there and back in which Josie chose to cry and complain most of the time. She was so sad to go home she pretty much just cried the whole 3 hours home. Thankfully Celia was at the stage where she just slept.

The other little girl sadly was sick the whole time with what turned out to be Roseola which we didn’t catch. Hopefully she and Celia will be able to play more this year. Next year I’ll work on a better group photo, but keeping everyone looking and even in frame was a real challenge and none of the kids were too cheerful about going home!