Happy Birthday Elle and Francesca!

We headed to McCarren Park in Williamsburg on Saturday to celebrate Elle and Frankie's second birthday.  The party was in the park next to the best sprinkler park I have been to (I am a little new to the park scene since Lyla was too young to play in parks last summer, but apparently sprinkler parks are the place to be in the city in the summer). It was a hot hazy day -- perfect for sprinkler play!



Lyla was the first one in the sprinklers and we had to pry her out at the end of the party.







Getting splashed


Climbing through the cement fence. She ended up getting stuck and has a couple of scrapes from me pulling her through.




Elle wondering what this crazy girl is doing.


Mark had to run through the sprinklers to get her and got himself soaked in the process.


We couldn't get her out in time to sing happy birthday to the twins. Here is everyone else singing happy birthday.


But we did get her out in time to have a cupcake.


Lyla and Elle were stealing little candy pieces off the cupcakes.  This is the "who us" look I got when I asked what they were doing.



Heather and Shannon


Kevin and Frankie


Little Ro Ro after lunch


Me and my girl


I call this her "Lyla from the block" shot -- leopard bathing suit checking out the basketball court


What is the logical thing to do after a two year olds' birthday party? Hit up a brewery, of course! Shannon and Kevin live right down the block from Brooklyn Brewery, so we spent the afternoon cooling off with Summer Ale.


Lyla slept most of the time we were at the bar, so we were able to relax a bit.




Ro Ro slept the whole time on Shannon.


When Lyla did wake up, she was pretty good at keeping herself entertained.


And entertaining us. I gave her an 8 out of 10 for her behavior :)

A Birthday Party!

Lyla was invited to her little friend Dahlia's birthday party last weekend at Hands On. Her and Dahlia take music class together at Hands On and have play dates a few times a week. It's kind of cute that she has a whole social life independent of me.

Miss Nicole started the party with her usual rendition of Old McDonald. Look at all the good little kids sitting in a circle. Where is Lyla? If you look closely, she is behind Nicole trying to break into the cabinet and steal the balls.



Caught in the act.


What did I do?


Despite her general misbehaving (I'll call it "curiosity"), she was adorable dancing to the music.



We did have a breakthrough at the end of the party. Lyla drank her very first juice box (or at least the half that she didn't squeeze out onto my shirt).

A Night on the Intrepid

On Friday night, we went to Mark's belated holiday party aboard the Intrepid. My mom came into the city to watch Lyla so we could go out. Lyla, however, only wanted to play in my closet while I was getting dressed. Here she is having a grand old time pulling down my clothes.


She tried to pull off each little ribbon on my favorite yellow J. Crew sweater.


Off we go to the party...


The Intrepid is HUGE. We didn't get to see a lot of it, but it looks like a really cool museum and they let you go everywhere on the ship. I was a little shocked they let a bunch of drunk people onto the flight deck.


There are some great old planes and bombers up there. My dad would have loved it.




And the view is pretty amazing too. Here is Ashley and Brennan.



And here is me and Mark. Whose shirt am I wearing, you ask? That belongs to Brennan. When I asked Mark for his sweater, he said "but it's freezing out." Brennan kindly offered me his shirt. What a gentleman :)

STB Christmas Party

We took Lyla to the children's Christmas party at my office on December 23. It's a really fun little party when you get to see all the kids. And everyone is a little bit lighter when the kids are around. There was a visit from Santa, face painting, arts and crafts, balloon animals, and an arcade room for the big kids. But the best part is that the cafeteria is filled with food just for kids (my favorite kind of food...) -- mac and cheese, chicken fingers, pizza, pigs in blankets, and pb&js -- yum. I had to work that morning and Mark was going to pick her up and bring her to my office. I left her "party outfit" for Dahlia to put her in. Unfortunately, her cute white velour pants were way too tight and she could barely squeeze her bottom in them (I guess I should have tried the outfit on first...) Mark and Dahlia managed to get them on, but they were not comfortable. I call them her "going out to the club" pants...But Dahlia is the best and sent a few back up pants with Mark so we could change her asap. Do you think she looks uncomfortable? If she was curious about Santa last time, this time she was sure -- she did not like him one bit. She would hardly sit on lap when we were near Santa. Mark says she has a general skepticism of men, which he is in favor of :) I think Lyla's favorite part of the party was just hanging out in my office and crawling through the hallway and visiting some of my co-workers. Here she is sitting at my desk.