Celebrating Frances

Mark and I took Frances to the New England Aquarium here in Boston to celebrate her second birthday!  We had a great time, but the pictures from the trip are not so good.  They keep it very dark in there - better for the wildlife? Frances spent quite a lot of time watching the penguins.  Lots of talk about getting wet in the bath.  Notice the cute little dress she's wearing.  Mom picked it out special for the day.

The fish would not cooperate with the picture-taking, but the giant tank was as awe-inspiring as ever.

Glow-in-the-dark-Frances taking in the whale skeleton, also a good shot of the cute little dress.

Then we got to the aquarium's new Shark & Ray Touch Tank.  The idea is that visitors gently rest their hands on the surface of the water and allow the sharks and rays to swim against their hands.  Frances was a little over-enthusiastic.  She splashed around in the water...

...and then she fell in a little.  She was soaked from the crown of her head to the middle of her chest.  Good-bye, cute little dress.  Yep, my kid went swimming in the Shark & Ray Swim Tank on her second birthday.  Great parenting.

"But, guys, why are we leaving?  I haven't touched a shark yet," said the consternated Frances.

Time for some cake.  Frances is currently obsessed with trains, Thomas the Tank Engine in particular.  My husband, the genius, whipped up this little ditty free-hand:

Not too shabby, right?  Yes, we used a train-shaped cake pan, but he didn't follow the pan's outline at all.  Just looked at a picture of Thomas and got to work.  We now have a back up plan if this architecting doesn't work out. 

Frances wasn't at all sure what to do with the candles.

We thought the 13 flames on the cake were a little intimidating, so we tried again with just one flame.  Frances wasn't any more interested in it.  I'm choosing to interpret this as a sign of wisdom.

Mark took literally 400 pictures of Frances opening her lovely gifts.  I'm going to summarize the experience with this one:

We'd originally planned to return to the aquarium post-nap because it was just that cool, but the place was overrun with teenagers, so we decided to indulge Frances's train fetish instead with a trip across the Charles.  It was a wise choice.  The river was thick with sailboats, many with their spinnakers flying.

Frances took this picture.  It says so much about her interests right now: bikes, bridges and trains (there's a train going across the bridge that's very hard to see).

And the two-year old herself!

Congratulations, kiddo, on a great two years.  We love you to bits.