5 minutes (plus) of pure cuteness.

I do realize that the blogging audience of 4 dwindles to 2 when the video is 5 minutes (approximately) long, but the two of you are going to enjoy this, I'm quite sure.

This video is classic 2-year-old (plus a coupla months) Lily. As adorable as it is to me, I'm not deluded into thinking it has a wider audience than two.

It's adorable on its own, but the whole story (which becomes evident quickly) is that this was not the video I was planning to take. She had playing with her stuffed animals when Bugger (a pink bear so named by Lily) got scared by the ghost. And then in her sweet little toddler voice she told him that it was okay and gave him a hug. Heart melt. So I grabbed my camera to catch it, but I missed.

It's cute anyway. And in case you wondered, the hair bow (that she INSISTED on wearing) was handmade locally by a friend of mine through Rain Bows.

33 pictures of Halloween.

Remember once when I said you never regret taking too many pictures, and you only regret not taking enough?

I might've been wrong about that. I'm taking more pictures than ever now because I'm trying to learn how to take better pictures, and as we all learned in kindergarten, the way to learn something is to practice, practice, practice.

The problem, of course, is that I'm drowning myself and my computer in all this practice, and then it takes me forever to weed through the 300 pictures I took on Halloween to come up with 33 pictures for the blog. 33!

So before my computer starts bitching again about its startup disk being almost full, I'll try to get some of these posted to the internets.

Of course, Lily wanted to be Prince-A-Rella for Halloween. She is currently obsessed with Cinderella. Fortunately for her, her fairy godmother (Nana) was here to help make it happen.

Bippity.
Boppity.
Boo.
Lily was joined by her cousins for Halloween. Here's Dragon (Connor.)
Do NOT call him a dinosaur. He's a DRAGON.
Spiderman (Tirin) was here.

And so was Tinkerbell (Pearl).
And a witch (Lia).
Who the hey is this guy?
Not the nicest way to ask for candy. (This is the kid across the street from his. He always has the best costumes.)
So eventually our crew was assembled and we were off.

Our first stop was Wine-O-Ween. Sigh. This is how we spent our first couple of Halloweens in our neighborhood. All the neighbors on our little street get together with bowls of candy and bottles of wine.
But the times change, and a trick-or-treating we must go.



At one house, a lady handed out full size candy bars and Barbie dolls. No lie. I think she was seriously underestimating the volume of trick-or-treaters that come to our neighborhood. (Well, she said she only had the three Barbies for the lucky first three girls.)

Lia could've gone home right then. She clung to that barbie and wouldn't even let anyone carry it for her.


Eventually, it was time to head back.

And examine the loot.

Lily discovered suckers.
And can-ny.


Now I have to figure out how to deal with a child who only wants can-ny. The new reality of Halloween indeed.

I figured out why parents are so impressed with their own kids.

You know how you'll overhear parents talking, and they're like "ooh little Johnny can count to 10 now." And then the other parent finds a similar skill to share like "how fantastic! little Suzy can hold a cup."

And you're like whoop-dee-freaking-do. Lemme know when little Johnny can solve trigonometric equations and I'll be impressed.

But to parents, time is a very fluid thing. At once, time flies faster than you can blink but the memory is as fresh as though it were yesterday.

This tiny little baby couldn't even hold her head up. (It honestly takes my breath away to see her this small. Kiki is bigger than she was at a week old!)

And still, the next day she's doing this.

Ok, she had help. But still. In my mind, I was trying to reconcile this with my image of the same little girl pulling herself up just to take two steps. I love these pictures with Khan's arm holding on. (Not letting go.)

I call her my baby in nearly every reference. This is not a baby.
She met a boy at the park?!
Ok, no. Just found a friend and some toys to play with.
She rolled the ball to him.
And he rolled it back to her.

I wanted to play, too. I almost thought she wasn't going to let me.
Whew. We're not there yet.
And she still waits for her daddy to go down the slide with her.

Mostly.

A low-key kind of birthday.

There had been plans made to celebrate Khan's birthday. However, my crash with the wall and resulting gimp foot scaled everything back.

Which, as it turned out, was exactly how he wanted to spend his birthday. (Or, he was just lying to make me feel better, and I love him for that, too.)

So we had a cake. Considering the house is decorated for Halloween already, I went with it. I suppose this is the curse of those born too near a holiday. I picked out the cake.

Lily chose the plates.

It's all fun and games until you get frosting on your elbow. Drah-mah.

Ok, so that was actually the night before the birthday. On the actual birthday, after every suggestion I could think of, Khan wanted to stay home and be lazy. Easy enough to oblige that request.

We walked around the neighborhood a little. (Sorry for the crappy out of focus shots here.)

We played dress up. When I tried to wear the white hat, Lily gave me a horrified look and said. "No. Daddy's." Well, you can't argue with that, I suppose.

She had to make phone calls. You know how busy toddlers are.

Plotting the next game, we played Lily's version of hide-and-seek. Now you see them.

And now you don't.

Now you see them.

And now you don't.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Happy birthday, baby. Love you more every day.