Happy Second Birthday Cassandra!

Cassandra is anticipating her birthday this year.  She has gotten into practice opening presents this year with Christmas only a few days ago.  She is starting to understand what we traditionally do for people's birthdays.

When asked what she wanted for her birthday, she told me "cake" so we hope we kept the Empress happy this year.  Upon further reflection, she did indicate that toys would be acceptable.  Anyway, here are a few pictures of her opening presents and having fun with them.  Some of them aren't even toys.  See the pink cat on the right?  That is a hooded bath towel for older kids.

So, now with all the present stuff done with it is on to the most important part:  Cake & ice cream!  First, she blew out her candle and then onto food.  She did a much better job than last year getting the food in her mouth.

New Daycare

We are looking into a new daycare for Cassandra and the new addition.  This morning, I dropped by with Cassandra so she could see the new place, meet the teachers and other children, and fill out paperwork.  I was ready to leave but after a mere thirty minutes, Cassandra was ready to stay the rest of the day.  Leaving was a bit of a struggle.  It probably didn't help that when story time began, she climbed into one of the teacher's laps.  This is less than thirty minutes after meeting the teacher.

Christmas With The Wendels

Cassandra is looking forward to today.  Aunt Holly and Uncles Doug and Greg from out of town are putting in an appearance.  She also gets to open more presents.

We started out the evening by getting my old rocking chair out of storage so she would have a kid sized chair to sit in for the evening.  I'm not sure she was thrilled with the rocking part at first.

Cassandra was more than happy to open presents.  She was almost too small to clear the book from the bag but after getting the book out, it was time to read.

Of course, with little kids sometimes the wrapping is worth more than the present.  With that in mind, Cassandra was given bubble-wrap as a gift.  (Well, it wasn't needed for packing anymore...)

After a while, she realized the bubble-wrap didn't pop very well on the carpet.  She brought the rocking chair over, put it on the bubble-wrap, and sat down.  Uncles Doug and Greg were impressed with her problem solving skills.

Looks like Cassandra got LEGOs.  Wonder why she is so happy...

Another book to read.  Cassandra loves story time.

And as the day winds down, Cassandra gets a cup of milk before bedtime.

Christmas With The Hodges Clan

After our "pre-Christmas" present opening, it was onto the main event.

Kensi is worn out by all the activity and this is only the first stop for us.

Cassandra did pretty well but with her wanting to help and all the cameras getting the back of some blond girl's head, I decided to get her a seat with a view.  She did pretty well...

But she is just short of her second birthday so still not much attention span...

After a while, the destruction of my dignity is the only thing that keeps the merciless whelp in check.

Well, not the only thing.  When there was not too much going on, she did a good job of passing out presents, even ones that were fairly good sized.

Of course, Cassandra also enjoyed opening presents too.  She is very happy every time she opens a present.

Christmas At Home

Cassandra woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning.  Overnight, more presents had appeared under (and around) the tree.  We were a bit lazy on the wagon and just put a bow in the corner. Regardless, Cassandra was quite excited to have her own wagon.

After breakfast (and getting dressed), we went ahead and opened up some of the presents.

In typical Cassandra fashion, she removed the bow from the wrapping paper and placed in on her own head.  The gold kind of gets lost in her hair but the important thing is that the training held.  It will be interesting to see for how many years she continues to do this.

She was very excited about this present.  It was one of the Muppet movies.

Caught In The Act

Cassandra was caught playing with the Christmas tree ornaments.  She likes the Fisher-Price and Little Tikes ornaments the most.  We've actually had to spend a lot of effort convincing her that they are not normal toys.

Big Helper On Mom's Birthday

Cassandra decided that Mom needed help opening her birthday presents.  Well, actually, she just likes to open presents.

I'm checking the bottom, Mom.  You never know with this family.

Trains At Christmas Time

This Christmas, we thought we take the Cassandra down to Union Station to see how she would react to hundreds of screaming kids.  OK, not quite true.  Kansas City Southern Railway has for many years put together a Holiday Express Train that kids love.  This gets tied in with many of the exhibits that are a permanent or semi-permanent part of Union Station.

Cassandra had a lot of fun.  Of course, the big favorites are Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends.  She busied herself by pointing out his friends including James shown below.

We also found Thomas pulling Annie and Clarabel.

Cassandra enjoyed seeing a LEGO train set much larger than our sets.  I think she wanted for us to go buy some more LEGOs so we could have a setup like this in our house.

Included in the exhibits was a restored train that used to run during the holidays at Macy's.  We even knew the engineer from Church.

And here are some shots of the Holiday Express.  Cassandra had a ball.

Boxes Are For Sitting In, Not Sitting On

We gave Cassandra a pull-ups box to play with.  She did pretty good right up until it stopped being a chair.

The Empress shows shock that something like this could happen.

And now she starts to cry because we didn't immediately rescue her from her predicament.  Never mind that she did this to herself.

We Are Expecting

We are letting friends and family know that Cassandra will be a big sister soon (late May/early June).  We've already told immediate family and it looks like the little one will luck out, not having to share time with nearby birthdays because there really aren't any for a few weeks either way.  The Empress is looking forward to having a minion to boss around.  She is really excited.

Cookie Decorating Party

We invited several friends over for something a little different.  Since kids like cookies so much, we thought we would put them to work decorating.  In reality, this just ended up being a combination of sugar ingestion and art projects.  It was a lot of fun...the hardest part for me was to convince Cassandra that is was OK to not eat the cookie immediately.  We really could make it and put it to the side and make another one.

The twins brought their parents.  Notice how I got smart and went to portrait views so I didn't cut off  anyone else's head.  Better late than never.

Neal brought his parents for fun.  In case you cannot read his shirt, it asks the question, "Dear Santa, Is it too late to be good?"  A very important questions for any child under the age of five.

Gwen applies decoration of some sort to a cookie.  Notice the high level of concentration?

Art projects are so much better if you can wear them and eat them too.

Decorating For Christmas

This is of course not the Empress' first Christmas.  It is however, the first Christmas where she can assist us in decorating.  As you can see, she really enjoys doing activities like this with Mommy and Daddy.

I Like Bowling

Cassandra has decided that she likes bowling...at least on the Wii.  She can't even "throw" the ball without help but she likes the game.  I think it makes her feel like she is all grown up.  She doesn't feel that us helping her makes her a baby so I'll take it while I can.

We Are Not Pleased

On occasion, the Empress does express her disappointment with the staff.  Thankfully, at this time this is limited to faces like this, no tantrums yet, and we are hoping this continues until 18 years old but are not holding our breath.

Stealing Mommy's Hat Again

Cassandra loves to steal our hats and shoes.  Here she is at it again.

Thanksgiving At Our House

Cassandra was given the opportunity to play hostess for Thanksgiving today.  We had all the family that was in town over for dinner.

For Cassandra, the sweet potatoes were a big hit.  Note that she eats them boiled with no butter, sugar, or marshmallows added.  The bread was good (Mommy made it from scratch) and the turkey was alright but the sweet potatoes were the best.

Thanksgiving Cookies

What Thanksgiving is complete without cookies?  These are butter cookies made with a cookie press.  Daddy loves this kind of cookie...the sugar sprinkles are an added bonus.

Here is a live action of Cassandra decorating cookies.  She still is working on remembering not to play with her food...before or after it is cooked.

Train Broken

On the way to the store this morning, we saw a crew working on the signals next to the train tracks.  We explained to Cassandra that they were "working on the tracks."  She repeated this several times over the course of the day.  Before dinner, a light suddenly went off.  "Fixing tracks.  Train broken."  I'm sometimes rather amazed by the insights she has.

LEGO Therapy With Daddy

Cassandra is feeling much better after a few days of antibiotics.  She decided she felt well enough to help Daddy with his Legos.  She helped put together the "Mallium Falcon."  Might be another year or two before she gets the name completely right.  It's alright.  She loves her Aunt Chril (Cheryl) and can't get her name quite right either.

Sick Little Girl

Well, it's official.  Cassandra has her third ear infection.  However, this one is different than the previous ones in that it spread to her ears after starting out as an upper respiratory infection instead of starting in her ears.  This was really weird for us because the ear infection flared up in just the last 24 hours.  It was clear yesterday morning and by 4:30 pm today she had an ear infection. 

Just two hours after her first dose of antibiotics, her eyes and nose have stopped running constantly.  She was just so miserable but she never had a fever and never slowed down and acted tired like last time.  How could it not have been allergies?  It is weird that we can't even rely on the absence of a fever to know she is healthy.

She did have fun watching Daddy make pumpkin cheesecake tonight.  She is fascinated by the hand mixer.  The daycare families are having Thanksgiving tomorrow night and we are bringing dessert.

Ten Days Ago

Ten days ago I referred to Cassandra as a little snot.  She seems bound and determined to live up to that.  She woke up this morning with lots of gunk in her eyes.  Mommy took her to the nearest infectious disease doctor, also known as Papa.  No ear infection.  Not pink eye.  Bad allergies, bad like Mommy's perhaps?  Poor child.  Of course, after a few hours of her running loose, you begin to forget you felt sorry for her.

Give her a bath, get her in her PJs, and get her a cup of milk and she is just so docile that you start to think that there are two kids...with polar opposite personalities.

You Can't Find Me!

Cassandra has been improving her hide and seek.  She does a pretty good job of making herself hard to find...and other than the giggling, you might never know you were being ambushed.  The pantry makes a nice creaking sound (appropriate for a haunted house) so it is probably a good thing we can hear her hiding to scare us.

Boo!