This is how Charlie went to music class today: robot sweatshirt, capri pants, rainbow leg warmers, brown and grey striped socks, multi-colored tennis shoes and pink and green backpack. It was her first foray into dressing herself and I have to say, she has a funky sense of style, but I think it works.

Papi helped her put on her backpack and she started heading for the door saying she was ready to go to school. She wore the backpack all day, even danced around class with it.

After thinking long and hard, we thought the most fitting Halloween costume for Charlie would be a werewolf. Not because she bites everyone, but because she’s a ferocious little manimal who constantly talks about eating people (which is, I guess, only one-off from biting everyone). “Do we eat Papi? Noooo, we don’t eat Papi. We eat Mama.” You get the picture.

We even taught her how to howl like a wolf.

This year’s Halloween was jam packed with activities. Friday night was spent galavanting around the Santa Ana Zoo for their Boo at the Zoo event. I had spent all week on Charlie’s costume but was still not finished by the time we left for the zoo so I was frantically sewing the ears and eyes on the wolf hat in the car on the way to the zoo–done just in time. The zoo was tons of fun: we got to see an animal presentation with snakes, spiders, and opossum and a barn owl. We tricked or treated (they gave out cool, non-candy stuff) and visited the animals. And we went on the carousel. Forgot the camera so this is all you get:

Yes, that blurry person in the background is me.

The next day, on Halloween, we took Charlie to her first Halloween party with a bunch of other LGBT families. There were several toddlers for Charlie to play with, lots of food and people to meet. Then, we headed over to Lola and Pop-pop’s for dinner and trick-or-treating. Charlie wore her wolf hat to about one house and then refused to put it on the rest of the night. We tried to get her to at least carry it so people would know she had a costume but she shoved it inside her pumpkin and refused to take it out. But, she did enjoy getting candy and eventually would venture up half on her own to say trick-or-treat and Happy Halloween. She was not fooled by the scary decorations–she loved the giant spiders, spider webs and skeletons flying through the air.

The next day, we went to the Los Angeles Zoo (to which we had never been). Charlie really enjoyed the Hippo and Giraffes and African Wild Dogs, but was not too keen on the great Apes. Which we thought was unusual. I think she was bitter because the Rhinoceros was hiding and we couldn’t see him.

Halloween weekend rocked.

Charlie turned two yesterday at 2:02pm. She had a great day at school (more on that later) and I made her a yummy dinner that she picked herself: hot dogs, almond butter and jelly sandwiches, watermelon and lentil soup. Then to top it all off she ate an entire chocolate cupcake, played in her sandbox and then ran around the neighborhood identifying everything she saw. It went something like this:

(run run run) “I see a garage. A pink garage I think. (run run run) There’s a truck. Look, a car. Look what I found! (run run run) Going for a walk. We’re walking. Oh I see a tree. There’s a rock!”

For blocks she did this. Then she slept for eleven hours straight without waking up once.

Where’d our baby go?

Last week we went to the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach with our friends Amy and Fletcher. The center has three different loops of varying lengths, a lake, a creek, ducks and other water birds, turtles and occasionally bunnies. Plus it is full of huge trees and native plants. We walked a little ways to the creek and camped out there for a couple hours.  Here’s a synopsis of the day in words and pictures:

After their intriguing conversation about the acorns they found on the ground, they decided it was time to chase ducks. Well, actually we turned around and realized we were surrounded by a horde of ducks, at which point our fearless children ran them off.  Then, with all that hard work, it was time to take a seat and eat some snacks.

About three weeks ago we went up north to the foothills east of Sacramento for my sister’s 30th birthday. My parents threw a great pool party at the house of some long-time family friends and all of Auntie Michelle’s friends were there. Charlie especially enjoyed the toy area that our friends had assembled for her. We hung out with the family for a couple days and then headed to wine country to see our friends Josh and Mara and their 8 month old baby, Tibor (who we’ve never met). The whole time Charlie could not stop talking about “Auntie Chelle” and “Baby Tee-bor.” Now, every time we mention someone else having a birthday and try to practice saying happy birthday, Charlie says, “happy birthday Auntie Chelle.”

The whole set of pictures is here.