Post-Dinner Entertainment

At dinner, Anna repeated over and over a story about how, "once upon a time, hello kitty banged against the wall and orange kitty came to kiss it to make it better and hello kitty didn't like that kiss.  And mean kitty said ? (something?)"  We didn't get the whole story when we tried to record this.  She just kept talking and singing on and on.  This is the real Anna.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Anna!!

On Saturday, Anna had her 2nd birthday party.  It was a balloon themed party.  She had balloon cupcakes, balloon animals, water balloon ice cubes, a balloon wreath and lots of pink and purple balloons.  

When the balloons first arrived, she loves running around in circles yelling "look at me!"  A lot of the balloons popped, which Lukey didn't appreciate, but Anna didn't really mind. 

So happy to be turning 2!

Dancing with Maeve.  Anna and Maeve bonded this weekend.  Maeve gave her a really nice present of some of her old clothes wrapped up in beautifully decorated boxes.  

A happy girl.  Anna's favorite things as a 2 year old: macaroni and cheese, chocolate milk, kitties, playing with Lukey,  dancing, shopping, singing, talking a lot, reading, coloring (especially pictures of kitties or garages with various things in them like pumpkins or Hello Kitty), tea parties, balloons, building castles with her magna tiles, dressing up, and the colors pink and purple.  She is a very smart and opinionated, but happy little baby.  

She had her usual help with opening presents.  She got a lot of really great gifts!  Thanks everyone!

Trying on her new shades.  

Leah gave Uncle Pat a good beating.  

Lukey and Kent were good at making funny faces to make Anna smile before we sang Happy Birthday to her.  It worked!  She even made a silly face back at them but I didn't get a picture of it.

She smiled while we sang to her and blew out the candles all by herself!  When we sang "how old are you now?" She said 2, but she didn't want to sing this year.  We'll try again next year.

On Anna's birthday proper, we went to the Henry Ford Museum with Nana, Pa Bob, Uncle Ben, Aunt Carrie, Uncle Pat, Maeve and Kent.  The kids were wild!  They had a great time though.  Anna liked holding hands and running down the ramps with Maeve a lot.

There was a lot of running around and rolling on the floor and tackling going on.

After the museum, we went to Mongolian Barbecue.  Lukey had fun picking out noodles and tofu and mushrooms to eat.  Though you can't tell from the picture, he kind of liked it.  

Anna mostly liked just eating tortillas, but her favorite part of the restaurant experience was the gong.  For her birthday they yelled out to all the patrons that it was Anna's birthday and they banged the gong a few times for her.  She was laughing and kicking out of control.  She loved it!  She kept asking to go back to the gong.  Then when I was singing her to sleep at night, she was just about sleeping then was wide awake all of a sudden asking me to tell her about the gong.  So I told her about them banging the gong for her and she got really happy and made me tell her about it again.

The kids all really liked their sundaes!