A 2 year old

It's true what everyone says about how little ones grow up way to fast. Clara turned 2 on April 27th. Crazy. She wanted an "Elmo birthday" so we went with a Sesame Street theme. Our current apartment is too small to host a party so we had it at my parents' house the day before her birthday.
The decor:

Ha ha, we tried ^^

The balloons were a big hit.

We had Snuffy's favorite meal of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. It happens to be Clara's favorite too.

After dinner, Clara enjoyed opening presents. She is at the stage where she wants to play with each gift as she opens it and it is hard to get her to open another present. But she really enjoyed every single thing she got.

Yeah, I was super pregnant. ^

After presents, we had cake. We just got a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and added a couple of Elmo candies to the top. We figured Clara could really care less about the cake and we wanted something yummy for the adults to enjoy. She blew out the candles, but wasn't really interested in eating any with all the fun toys around to occupy her time instead.

Thanks to our immediate families and my grandma for coming and making her special day so delightful.

Easter 2014

Holidays are so much fun with little kids. Clara had a great time with Easter this year.

My sister and I took our girls to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. I talked it up for weeks beforehand. Clara was too scared to go anywhere near Santa this last Christmas, so I thought that if I talked up the Easter Bunny, she'd be less apprehensive. We even went to the mall a couple of days before and just looked at him from a distance. She seemed really interested. Well, we did better than we did with Santa in that we actually got her on his lap. She was not happy about it though. Marseille was totally chill and cheesed it up for the camera.

A few times before Easter rolled around, Grandma Beth painted Clara's nails spring colors and they called them Easter egg fingers.

Clara got to do a little Easter egg hunt at her Noyce grandparents' house. 

It took a lot of encouragement to get her to keep looking for eggs once she discovered the candy inside the first ones she found, but eventually she got them all. Jackpot.

 On Easter morning, Clara got to raid her own little Easter basket, which she loved. We tried not to do too much candy, which is good because her grandparents each gave her a basket with plenty of delicious treats.

I didn't get a single picture of her in her Easter dress. Best mom ever. But here she is chilling at grandparents' house after church. We had a low key dinner with family at my parents' house to polish off the day.