Birthday Party!

Thanksgiving weekend we celebrated Cora's 2nd birthday, first with family in Pleasanton, then in Sacramento with friends. Here's a few pictures from the day of her bunch birthday party. 

Her birthday gift from mom and dad - her very own kitchen. We built it in the weeks leading up to her birthday and moved it into her room that weekend. 

Swinging at the pinata at her birthday party. Tony searched all over for the perfect pinata for her. 

The kids picking up the spoils after it disgorged all it's goodies. 

Cora enjoying all her new play food after the party (full immersion in the joy of chocolate mousse indicated a costume change was needed when the party ended). 

And enjoying a party balloon at the end of a busy day. 

Cora's turning 2!

Since we rarely get pictures with all of us for Cora's birthday we took family photos - here are some of our favorites.  Joel (who also took her 1 year pictures) did a great job and we remembered to color coordinate her toy this year :)

If you look back to photos from last November look how much shorter her hair was! I thought it was long then, but now when you stretch it out it's halfway down her back!

One Year, 364 days

In one more day our baby girl will be two!

Crazy and so hard to believe. But she's doing all kinds of new things and remembers so much!

Like when you want to leave, or go put on PJ's she says "five minutes"...evidently mommy says "I need 5 minutes,  Cora" more than she realizes :)

And she repeats and remembers things...like riding the train at the zoo with Papa 3 weeks ago...she still says "train with Papa" every time we drive by the zoo. And she knows when we are driving up to our house and says "home now."  Or who we've talked about seeing or doing things with. She amazes me.

Two years ago we were making our to do list for the few days before she arrived which included making some freezer meals, picking up the house, buying some baby items, and getting a baby name book to revisit our potentials list, going on one last nice dinner date...all those things we didn't get to before she showed up.

Details about her today:
Favorite foods include pomegranate seeds, blueberries,  "cheesy peas" which is mac n'cheese with peas stirred in, cauliflower, peas, apples, carrots, beans, crackers, oatmeal, smoothies...she's a good eater. :)

Still loves to play outside, go for walks, hold her baby doll, read books (and she's starting to "read" some of them to you), help cook, and is starting to figure out puzzles. She's a good sharer (knock on wood), and likes to play with her little friends.

And at 2 years Cora is 21.5 lbs (zero percentile), 33 inches tall (25th percentile), and her head is in the 50th percentile. 

Like Feeding a Horse

So Cora is evidently into foods high in anti-oxidants because her new fave is pomegranate seeds (although I'm not sure what would win in a head to head test, are blueberries still king?), and she can't eat them fast enough. She asked daddy to help her with "big bite" and here's the result which was too funny not to share.

He just had to keep his palm flat and fingers out of the way or she probably would have chomped down on them to in order to get the seeds. Just like feeding a horse...not that I'm comparing our child to a farm animal or anything ;)

Click the center of the video to play it.