Mason's belated birthday celebration at Port Discovery

Hannah's cousin, Mason, turned 1 earlier this month, and since we couldn't make it to Hagerstown to celebrate on the actual day, we bribed them with lunch and a trip to Port Discovery to get them to come to us the following week. Note to self: Saturday afternoon is not an ideal time to visit Port Discovery...the place was a madhouse. 

At Hannah's insistence, we headed straight to The Wizard of Oz traveling exhibit on the third floor first thing. Hannah has been obsessed with all things Emerald City since my mom and I went to see Wicked at the Hippodrome back in the fall (and she stayed home crying hysterically about being left out--sorry Kathryn!!). I picked up the original book the last time we were at the library, and we all read it together as a family in about a week. Now we're anxious to pick up the sequel when we trade in our current books for new ones.

Clay putting felt facial features on the scarecrow.

Mason walking around the spiral start of the yellow brick road (after knocking down the rainbow).

Hannah and Clay collecting eggs (presumably part of the farm where Uncle Henry and Aunt Em live??).

When Mason's running started to extend beyond the exhibit, my mom and Kim and I took him to Tot Trails where he was a bit more contained and us pregnant and overweight people (Kim excluded from both categories) could sit down and rest. While we did that, the daddies took the 3-year-olds to the Kid Works exhibit to run off their insanity.

Eventually, they all made it back to Tot Trails, and Hannah and Clay entertained themselves in the sand box for a while.

Clay was mesmerized by the falling sand...

When Hannah saw me snapping pics of Clay she tossed down her sand toy and cuddled up to her cousin, who remained mesmerized by the sand. She's really turned into quit the ham!

We ended our visit enjoying the plastic spaghetti-pork chop-cantalope sandwiches that the kiddos brought to us in the Tony's Diner exhibit.

Of all the kids I know, Mason makes the funniest faces. This one is not even a great example of some of the hysterical ways in which he contorts his cute little face, but it gives you a bit of an idea.

Soooo....if anybody ever wants to go to Port Discovery with us, we ended up upping our membership to get in 6 people (instead of 4) because it was cheaper to do that than it was to buy everyone individual day passes. If you want to get in our membership and help us take advantage of it, we always love company, especially if you, or your kid is willing to keep up with Hannah because I am moving slooooow these days.

Happy belated birthday to Mason!

Hannah-isms: Tomato soup and how to wear a summer dress in the winter time

Hannah's latest obsession is tomato soup. She eats it at least once a day, sometimes even for breakfast. The funny thing is that she HATES tomatoes, so much so that she won't even eat red peppers because they dare to resemble tomatoes if only in color. I had no intention of pointing out the link between the much hated and the much adored, and as it turns out, I didn't need to. She put it together herself, but just long enough to totally discredit the link. It happened while she was talking to Amy on the phone last week. After letting her bestie bestest know that she was about to eat some tomato soup, she then imparted Amy with following wisdom: "Tomato soup isn't made from tomatoes. It's just called that because it's the same color." Riiiiight....

Since nobody likes a post without a pic, I'm dropping in this random one from our trip to Port Discovery with Brody and Addison a few weeks ago. Hannah dressed herself in what was by far the most jaw-droppingly uncoordinated outfit ever. First, some black leggings with polka dots followed by this pink flowery/paisley shirt that Eric picked up at REI and is meant to be worn as a bottom layer, and then, to top it off, her ladybug dress. Totally awesome. This is her thing lately--pick out a long-sleeve shirt and some pants and then throw a summer dress over the whole thing. I think my little fashionista is onto something....It doesn't hurt that she hangs out with such a stylish crowd too.

Out with the old...

Guess who managed to stay up until midnight last night for the first time since Hannah was born! That's right, this early-to-bed, mostly loser-ish mama right here.  It helped that Laura was here making life fun, and it also helped that Eric volunteered to stay home so that I could walk down to 34th Street to see the ball drop, something I've wanted to do for years but somehow never got around to doing in all my 5-1/2 years of living here.

Photo courtesy of Ms. Laura Mae and Jon

I've gotten terribly behind in my blogging this month and don't feel like dragging December's memories into the new year with me so I'm going to create a monster of a post catching you up on everything you didn't know you missed in December (which, as it turns out, is not as much as I thought) starting with Christmas day and working backwards. Get your reading muscles ready!


1. Christmas (as in Christmas day)
Hannah took her time opening her presents, playing with each thing she opened for a while before opening another, so the present-opening lasted all morning which was really nice.

As I said before, I'm not much of a shopper, and I don't want Hannah to get used to having a ton of stuff under the tree, and we spend a lot through the year on various classes (getting ready to add Spanish classes to her weekly routine which already includes gymnastics, music, and kids fitness fusion) and memberships (just bought a Port Discovery membership and renewed our membership to the aquarium). That said, the only things we put under the tree for her were two packs of Dinosaur Train figurines and a book, but those figures combined with the Megabloks Dinosaur Train that Grannah and Granpah got her made her day. I don't think I've mentioned Dinosaur Train before, but it's awesome, and Hannah loves it, and I love that she loves it because it's a seriously great kid show. You should check it out if you have kids.

Grannah and Granpah got Eric this crazy face/head warmy thing and some nice socks and flannel pants, all of which will come in quite handy when he takes his crazy self to Minnesota this month to dedicate an entire week of his life to dogsledding and camping in below freezing weather. Ugh. I'm cold and miserable just thinking about it. You couldn't pay me enough money to go on a trip like that!! I can think of few things more miserable than spending 7 minutes in below freezing weather, let alone 7 days. No thank you!

Grannah and Granpah also got Hannah an indoor gardening kit. Grannah helped the munchkin plant the seeds that afternoon, and a few days later, they sprouted! Hannah's having fun watering her plants and watching the green shoots get bigger every day.

After a nap we walked to the playground for some fresh air.

Hannah's got a new game where she stands behind this little play bar thingy and pretends to be a waitress of sorts, asking us what we want and then running off to the grass to retrieve it the pretend smoothie or sandwich or whatever was asked for before bringing it back to the customer. Here's Grannah placing her order.

2. Holiday parties
We got fancied up for Eric's holiday party at the beginning of this month, and sadly, the pics (due to my inability to take low light pics) turned out pretty terribly, but I thought I'd post one for posterity's sake anyway.  I got my hair cut the following week so it no longer looks so incredibly, ridiculously terribly thin, though I do find that I have a lot less hair these days than ever before which totally sucks.

Amy babysat for us that night (and also did my hair and makeup and provided that super-sweet push-up bra) so we got to relax and enjoy the night knowing that Hannah was more than fine. She was so excited to have Amy to herself for the night that she repeatedly asked us to leave--it was fantastic! So we went out and had some drinks and even danced! It took me four drinks to get to the dancing point, and I suffered a bit the next day, but it was worth it.

Eric was hurting a bit the next morning too so when Hannah woke up early, the two cuddled up on the couch and watched videos on the internet. I love this pic.

We went to my holiday work party the week after but didn't get any pics which sucks because my hair looked awesome that night. Oh well.  Mary Cate babysat for that so once again, Hannah ushered us out of the house, and we were able to totally relax and enjoy getting to know my new coworkers.

3. Meeting baby Zoey!!
The first exciting thing that happened this month that I never got around to blogging about was Zoey being born to Amy and Nate next door. This means that Hannah is no longer the only kid on the block!! It's going to be so fun watching Zoey grow up and watching her interact with Hannah.

We went over to meet her and take some pics about a week after she was bornp Hannah was mesmerized.  She has been asking for a baby sister for some time now, and meeting Zoey made her more insistent. We keep trying to explain that we have no control over whether it's a boy or girl and wouldn't she be happy with either a brother or a sister, but at that, she just pauses, narrows her eyes at us and says, "No. I want sister."

Alright, you're caught up now I think.  Whew!! Sayonora 2011!!  Happy 2012!

Hannah takes Clay to Port Discovery

I was reprimanded today for slacking on my blog.  My mom has been waiting none-too-patiently for me to post pics from Hannah's play date with her cousin last week, and the thing is, I would have posted them WAY sooner, but I totally forgot about it. I also took (and forgot about) some pics of Hannah helping Eric build a window box last weekend and also of Hannah's first ride in the Jeep.  I don't know how I managed to forget about the existence of so many pics....Suffice it to say that I will be busy posting them over the next few days.

First things first though. Chip and Erica brought Clay down last Thursday, and I took them to Port Discovery because it was rainy and Port Discovery is probably the coolest indoor place for kids to play, and since Chip doesn't come down often, I wanted to make sure we did something super fun to entice him to come back more frequently.  

We spent most of the morning in the Tot Trails exhibit because it's pretty contained.  Clay is a runner and he's increasingly hard to keep up with. He's like a bumble bee or a butterfly or some other quickly flitting insect, flying across the room from object to object.  That's not Hannah's style, but she managed to keep up. 

Clay took a minute to warm up to the nets but once he got used to it, he was all over it and climbing up parts of that Kid Works exhibit that I'd never been up before...My camera settings were all screwed up though so I don't have any good shots of all that fun craziness.

Uncle Chip kicked the soccer ball around with Clay and Hannah for a while.  

Back at the house, the kids pulled the cars out of the garage and took 'em for a little spin around the kitchen.

I have a number of pics of Hannah planting a super huge kiss on Clay, but none turned out...

Earlier in the week we were looking at baby pics of Clay, and I kept telling her that he was coming to play soon. I guess it worked, I mean, I guess she remembered him this time because when they pulled up, she was standing at the door squealing in excitement and clapping her hands.  I think they liked the welcome party....I hope it makes them want to come visit more often. I like hanging with my little brother. I should probably motivate their way more often too....

Hannah's first moon bounce

I know I've already posted a ton of pics of our previous two visits to Port Discovery, and for that reason, I wasn't even going to take my camera in with me when we went on Saturday, BUT, there was a moon
bounce there to celebrate Littles' Day (for kids under 5), and I LOVE a moon bounce so I felt it necessary to capture Hannah's first bounce. And since I was carrying the camera anyway....I took just a few more....okay, a lot more shots, but hey, that's why I titled this blog "Going Mamarazzi"!! At least I'm cognizant of and apologetic for the things that make me annoying.  Just be happy that this is a blog post and you can get bored and close the page the very second that your eyes start glazing over out of boredom.

First, the moon bounce shot.  Sadly the moon bounce was not the hit I thought it would be. I guess, as with most things, she'll need a little more time to get used to it before she's bouncing around like a professional moon bouncer.  I mean, she liked it, but just not for long, and she didn't do any bouncing, just a little exploratory crawling.

So, the Goddard School sponsors this event, and they had this awesome bubble machine set up at one of their tables that blew giant bubbles and even blew a ton of bubbles inside of bubbles. I expressed my admiration for this machine and was told that they picked it up for $15 at Walmart....I haven't shopped at a Walmart in years on principle, but I'm tempted to sneak in and grab one of these things because I really, really HATE blowing bubbles. I love having bubbles, but I hate blowing them.  Maybe I can find it on Amazon and keep my principles? Oh, I forgot to mention that Kylie and Adrienne came with us too, and there's Kylie's back in the pic below.

Loving the turtle in the water world exhibit

I never noticed these body driers before...so fun (and necessary)!

Also never noticed the surfboard photo prop area...Good eye Adrienne!

A bean bag is another thing I've been wanting to get for Hannah, I think because when I was little, I always wanted one.  We don't really have any place to put one though...

Collaborating on an art project

The last few pics reminded me that I've also been wanting to get Hannah a little toy kitchen for a while now...but we don't really have any place to put that either. Maybe we should just get a membership to Port Discovery and go there when we want to romp on the beanbags and cook in the play kitchen.

Mmmm...lasagna

Mmmm....mustard on my eggs

We got a free 3-month membership to Port Discovery when we joined the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance which we'll be activating soon, but I promise not to keep bringing my camera in and posting picture after picture of Hannah (and Kylie) running around the children's museum.  This is it! Hope it wasn't too painful.