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!

Just a little love shot

Found this random pic of Hannah just now when uploading pics from our weekend trip to Port Discovery. Eric snapped this pic right around Valentine's day when Hannah was mass producing valentines to hand out to her classmates using foam hearts decorated with a variety of foam stickers.

Here she is at her pattern-mixing best! That dress is the final accessory to every single outfit she puts on. Not looking forward to the day when it either falls apart or begins to resemble a belly shirt at which point it will need to disappear and death and pestilence will fall upon the land...

Happy belated heart day!

Hannah swims underwater!

Hannah learned how to swim underwater! She learned it a few weeks ago, but I kept forgetting to get the video off my phone. As it turns out, it's not that great of a video, and since it's been a few weeks, she's an even better swimmer now. As long as she has her goggles on she'll dive under and swim until she needs to come up for a breath. Watching her do that for the first time was one of my proudest mama moments! So, this is a really short video (can't get it off my phone otherwise), and like I said, she's gotten way better since I took this, but it's a little something for the grandparents and other super big Hannah fans.

Ugh...I can never get the embed feature to work--here's the link.

Hannah and Liam

Hannah has become great friends with Liam, an almost 5-year-old who lives a few blocks south of us. They play together really sweetly, and since our schedules are similar and his mom and I get along well, we've been hanging out pretty much weekly for the last few months. This week we took advantage of Tuesday's warm, sunny weather and met at the Linkwood playground. I'd have loved to have gone on a hike somewhere but I pulled a muscle in my rib cage/back (I think the serratus anterior) and can't be on my feet for more than about 15 minutes at a time without encountering more back pain than I'm interested in enduring, so I suggested a spot with plenty of benches.

The great thing about Linkwood is that there's a ton of wide open space with trees, a trail, and a stream. Sometimes we get distracted throwing sticks and rocks in the stream and don't even make it all the way to the playground.  This time we beelined for the equipment and surrounding benches, but eventually they tired of the playground and we meandered around, playing hide-and-seek with Atticus in a giant pile of branches that had been cut from a tree and then traipsing around in the leaves and trees by the stream. I sat down when I could and then herded Hannah to the car when I couldn't take it anymore.

Back by the cars, Liam and Hannah used the wall as a balance beam and then sat down to rest together (or maybe inspect something? I actually have no clue what they're doing) having no idea how cute they looked from behind. Thanks to Liam's mom for sharing this photo and letting me post it publicly!!

Photo courtesy of Jeanne Stafford (Liam's mom)

Hannah's furry art fan

The furry feline of the house is a big fan of Hannah's art, especially when it's piled up on the floor waiting to be taped to the overflowing "gallery" wall.