Officially 2

Time flies, my little princess is already 2 years old. How did we celebrate her birthday? It was not anything big or expensive thing we spent on Charlotte's birthday but it was a celebrated with a series of great programs and events.

Let's start with her 1st present, that was a couple of weeks back. It was a double sided art easel from Toys"R"Us that we bought for her. As I blogged about her drawing hobby earlier, Charlotte continues to show her interest in drawing (and started to "decorate" my house furniture too). One side of this easel is a black board and the other side is the white board. The easel set also comes with a pack of magnetic alphabets/numerical characters that you can placed it on the white board side of the easel. Our plan was to only let her open up the present on her birthday but I gave it to her a couple of weeks before her birthday and she has been happily drawing on the white board. I am keeping the chalks and didn't let her know that she could draw on the black board side. I am a little hesitant to let her use the chalks for now. She loves the art easel, and she loves to play the win-loose-or-draw game (well, we draw and she guess of course). It's also my secret weapon to distract her when she is cranky or throwing her tantrum sometimes. Of course, I need to be prepared to draw something that I have never drew it before and that will make her laugh but she wants it over and over again after that (sigh!).

Sunday (Oct 28th), MaMa and KongKong (my parents) bought Charlotte her birthday present to our house. Because they will be away (travel to Beijing) during Charlotte's birthday, they purposely made a trip to downtown and her this...

Charlotte loves her new Beetle, every time she will bring her doll together and pretend to go "kai kai" (LOL). This is also a new hot toy to the rest of the playgroup children, now they don't have to fight for the motorcycle anymore :)

Sunday (Nov 4th), I bought her a small birthday cake and did the candle blowing thingy with her playgroup friends. It was fun to celebrate children's birthday with many kids around. After that night, Charlotte repeats 2 sentences for the rest of the week: "friend friend, come, draw draw" and "blow, blow"...

Saturday morning (Nov 10th), we already planned to bring Charlotte for a new experience - feeding fishes. We took her to the Air Itam Dam after breakfast. We brought along bread and get ready to let her try the new activity. The water at the dam was very full as the result of the recent wet weather. Unfortunately, it was drizzling but we still proceed, with umbrella of course. Charlotte was all excited but she didn't really know what was going to happen. We threw the first piece bread into the water, and waited. There were no respond! Oh dear, where did the fishes gone? Then we threw a few more pieces, and this time we got a big splash from the water! We saw so many big fishes fighting for the food! Then only Charlotte knows what she'll get when the bread is thrown into the water. She wanted to try and so we let her. But the place we stood was quite far from the water, and the pieces of bread that Charlotte threw didn't get to the fish but all got stuck on the slope of grasses. She saw a big tortoise (trust me, really big one) swimming very slowly but getting closer to where we stood. Pat kept trying to throw the bread to the tortoise but it's reaction was so slow and the fishes ate the all bread before it managed to reach the food. Charlotte was very excited and keep shouting "tis, come!" (ha!). We had to end the feeding session real fast because the rain was getting heavier. We decided to bring Charlotte to where we used to stay the next morning.

Sunday morning (Nov 11th) - there is a lake in front of the apartment where we used to stay. The lake is full of fishes, tortoises and sometimes we see iguana too. We took Charlotte there on Sunday morning because we know there she can see the fishes at a real close distance. This time, I brought biscuits instead of bread. Biscuits are heavier and it's easier for Charlotte to throw a bit further to reach the fishes. We found a good spot, see how close we were from the fishes...Daddy had to hold her just in case she got carried away and stepped into the lake.

Last Sunday (Nov 11th), we invited PIL (Parents In Law) to our house for a small celebration. That was her 2nd candle blowing experience and she was already like a pro but still need a bit more practise on the candle blowing action. She clapped her hands during the birthday song, and you can really notice how happy she was. She knew that was especially for her.

The video was not captured to satisfaction, but that's the only memory what we got...

Did you notice that she actually clapped to the birthday song ryhtum correctly? (No? Watch again...)

After cake cutting, Charlotte was really in happy mood. She danced when her daddy played the Andrea Brocelli Live in Las Vegas music DVD. She danced happily by herself, in her beautiful dress that we got her from Gap Kids. That was so princess-like (bias? I know)

We got her another present - a basic play-doh set. It's just a 2 color play-doh set, with several cutting and molding tools and accessories. This is something different from her toy collection, happy birthday baby!

To be continue? You bet!