Birthdays are always good

Yesterday we celebrated Elissa's second birthday. I convinced her to put on a party dress on the basis that it had a fluffy skirt - she wasn't having a bar of the chiffon number. I figure I've got another 6 months max of getting to have any opinions on her clothes, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.


Ben asked for a photo with his sister.


She suffered the theft of her limelight in silence.

(I should also note that Elissa's dress was more appropriate for the weather than Ben's long sleeve shirt - he seems to be oblivious to temperature in both directions.)

As noted previously, Nerida volunteered to make the cake (a white chocolate mud cake) and I did an extremely hasty and very dodgy job of decorating it.


But Elissa barely noticed the cake - the fire had 100% of her attention.


(Note the wardrobe change - present from Nerida.)

Then she decided the fire was cool.


Then she finally noticed the fire was on top of cake.


It just got messier from here.

Grandma gave her a doll with a bed, clothes, feeding accessories and bib, which was an instant success. Nerida gave her some cool play clothes as well as the fairy dress. We gave her a monster truck (with "Grave Digger" written on the side - perhaps I should have read that more carefully), a dress and a toy toaster. Every one of kids enjoyed every single present. It was pretty cool.

The doll, however, had an added bonus.

At bedtime she carefully put baby to bed, patted her, said "I love you, have a good sleep, see you in the morning" and turned around and walked out of the room.

The doll provided a new excuse to not go to bed. Definitely an instant favourite.