Noah's Ark

LA is full of great things to do. Today we took advantage of the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Museum. We had a blast! The kids could touch, sit on and play with anything they saw, which is a welcome change for a mother of a two year old. Ava was especially into the elephant and the turtle. Elsa was into my camera and I ruined her whole experience by not letting her eat it. Anyway, I highly recommend this exhibit to anyone who lives in or visits LA.

Elsa, or should we say Joey, in a kangaroo's pouch.

Ava rides a camel outside the Ark

Ava makes it rain on the Ark

Elsa makes friends with a Walrus

Ava plays with the animals in the mini-Ark

Elsa Sits

I know this post is a little overdue, but for family members who haven't seen it, Elsa sits by herself! She's growing so fast! She gets better every day!

New Motto: NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A TWO-YEAR-OLD!

Yes, I have a new motto and it is: "Never Turn Your Back on a Two Year Old!" Ava has finally hit the stage where I'm worried if it gets too quiet. Some of her latest projects have included unrolling all the toilet paper off the roll..... a classic and Sunday's stroke of brilliance.... plucking all the petals off the beautiful flowers in her room and feeding them to her goldfish Nemo. So far Nemo seems to be doing okay, so we're hopeful that he'll pull through.

The other day, I put Ava in her seat to do some painting, one of her favorite activities. She wanted to do some Sleeping Beauty pictures, so I set her up with paint and a little bit of theme music. She started out great by painting representations of the fairies fighting over the color of the dress...Pink or Blue. She painted to the song, "Magical House Cleaning/Pink or Blue" from the Sleeping Beauty soundtrack. The project was going great, so we moved on to painting the dragon. She started painting with black and purple to "Battle Against the Forces of Evil," also from the Sleeping Beauty soundtrack.

I kind of got involved in looking for our AWAL W2 forms and forgot to check on the painting situation. When I turned back around, this is what I found....

Here are a few pics of Ava's creations from that day, but without a question, her greatest masterpiece was.....HERSELF!

Break Away from Hand-Me-Downs

So, the second child tends to get a lot of hand-me-downs. Especially if that child is the same gender as the first. This theory is generally true for Elsa, but not this week! Elsa just got a fabulous new toy thanks to leftover funds on a Buy Buy Baby gift card from my lovely friends at Saks. Here are pictures:

Ava's Exersaucer.....inherited from a neighbor


And Elsa's Exersucer......


A small upgrade, no? Well, this happy and sweet little baby deserves to have something shiney and new and all her own to play with.

New Bracelets

Sorry to do this to you all, but I'm pretty excited about some of the new bracelets added to our manhattan baby bracelets collection. I thought I'd do a quick showcase here and if you're interested, head to my site:
http://manhattanbabybracelets.blogspot.com

Easter Slide Show

Easter

This post is a little late, but better late than never. This year had the potential to be a really sad Easter. Jared has been working nights and was on call all day at the hospital Easter Sunday. I was beginning to think that it was going to be a sad day to get the girls all dressed up and not have their daddy be able to see them. And then to do Easter dinner and an egg hunt by myself just sounded miserable to me! Not to mention the thought of Jared at the hospital wondering what we were doing while he's working his head off!

Then all of the sudden I realized the Walks would be in town. The sky began to brighten. Then a plan began to hatch to take food over to the hospital to have Easter Dinner with Jared....then I found out Mare would be here.... then a plan began to form to do an Easter Egg hunt with Jared over at the hospital. YEAH! Maybe this Easter was going to turn out after all!!!

Mare was so helpful getting the girls ready and cooking like the little chef she is. Of course Ava was a stinker about getting her picture taken, which I'm told is my fault because I took too many pictures of her early on. Then the girls were impossible to get a picture of together!!

But, that disappointment aside. Church was great! It was fun to have the family come in and fill up a big long bench with me! After church we packed up and headed over to the UCLA campus to have a picnic and egg hunt.

WONDER OF WONDERS! MIRACLE OF MIRACLES! Jared was able to come over and hang out with us the whole time! It was perfect until the squirrels started stealing and eating our plastic Easter Eggs. That's a small price to pay for such an outstanding day!!!

And of course, no Easter picnic is complete without jumping on a loose grate and making lots of noise.

Thank goodness, Easter 2008 turned out to be a great one for the books.

Villains

It's been a long week! Elsa has been throwing up and has even had some big D. Needless to say, we've spent almost every second inside. Thank goodness Grandma Johnson sent us her copy of Sleeping Beauty! Ava has watched it about 30 times and now walks around the house singing, "I Know You...." Here's the weird part. I was so worried that she would be scared of Maleficent and the dragon, and what's her favorite part? The part with the dragon, of course! She laughs when the dragon comes and when Prince Phillip stabs her with the Sword of Truth Ava either says, "Poor Dragon," or "Dragon Go?" Hmmmm. What does this mean?

And that's not all.... We went to Disneyland a week ago and watched the parade. Belle goes by.... no wave. Cinderella goes by....no wave. Ariel goes by....no wave. Ursula goes by.... Ava's waving her arm off and yelling "Ursula!" "Ursula!" (PS~ Flotsam and Jetsam were soooo funny! They were really taking their jobs seriously with some spectacular dance moves and fabulous facial expressions!)

Glad she's not scared of the villains, but should I worry that they're turning out to be her favorite characters?!