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.