Every morning Charlotte and I hang out together on the couch. I give her milk and then put my arm around her shoulders and pull her close to me.
This morning she brought Baby to the couch with us. She slung her arm around Baby’s shoulders and pulled her close. I marvel every day at the way she learns from us.
(Also, Santa jammies in May - hee hee!)
Riding the New York subway. She can call herself a born and bred New Yorker for at least a little while longer.
Me and my munchkins on a Wednesday morning. Charlotte kept saying ‘more pich-ers!’ and ‘cheeeeeese Wis-ton!’ so I now have about 35 pics of us hanging out on the couch.
Charlotte and her bestie checking out the fish after our pizza dinner last night. Can you tell which one is Charlotte?
Is it just me or do normal every-day Mums these days seem to turn into baking geniuses for their children’s birthdays. It appears to be de rigeur to create culinary masterpieces out of cake - I’m talking Elmo replica birthday cakes. And heaven forbid you buy the birthday cake! Anyway, I thought about baking Charlotte some kind of extravaganza and 2 seconds later I laughed. Nope, not me. But I do know how to bake something really delicious thanks to John’s Mum.
And it involves using a cake mix.
Now, I’m not the most domestic person but even I like to bake my cakes from scratch. In fact, I quite enjoy baking cakes. But I had witnessed my daughter hoover a small piece of this cake in Florida and she’s generally so fussy with food (yes, even cake!) that I decided to make what she likes!
And so I made lemon cake. From a box.
And everyone raved about how delicious it was! The secret is to add a carton off lemon pudding. And bake in a bundt pan. Seriously….so….good.
Oh, and Charlotte helped bake her own cake. We have a little step-stool that she uses to brush her teeth so I had her drag it into the kitchen and delegated as much as possible to her. So I guess technically my 2 year old baked her own birthday cake. From a box. (Did I mention the box part of the recipe?)
I barely got my new handbag out of the box before Charlotte claimed it.
(It’s a J.Crew Mini Brompton)
Charlotte brought her handbag to the playground today and played for over an hour without putting it down. I was impressed.
One of my fondest childhood memories is from when I was 4 or 5 years old and my Mum put on an Easter Egg Hunt for me in the backyard of the apartment building that we first lived in when we moved to Sydney. So I was really excited for Charlotte’s first Easter Egg Hunt.
John took her to Starbucks to get coffee. While they were gone I high tailed it downstairs and hid the eggs and other treats. And by hid I really mean scatter in an obvious fashion in the grass because let’s face it - she’s 2. I walked back up to the lobby of our building, laid a trail of eggs to the elevator and waited impatiently for them to get home.
She came in the door, took her basket and started collected eggs. The following wa shouted over and over again:
MORE EGGS!
BUNNY!
I just snuck in for tonight’s removal process (see post below). This gives you an idea of how many more animals there are now. I’m giggling at the Elmo who appears to be peeking out from under the bottom of the the blanket.
It’s like a game of jenga. How many can I remove without waking her up?
The bed time routine used to be a straightforward kiss, hug, I love you, followed by a basic tucking in. Now there is the pre-bedtime routine that involves me sitting in the chair opposite the crib, having Charlotte fetch each of her stuffed animals, and finally watching and giggling as I throw them across the room into the crib one by one. About an hour later I creep in and remove all but 2 or 3 friends. This photo is from over a week ago. The game has grown since then. Last night I removed thirteen stuffed animals. Thirteen.
