Our little Wallaby is a drama queen. Not in the melodramatic sense  (although she’s two, so that too) but as a dramatic actress of the highest order.

The first symptom was a cough. A totally convincing fake cough, late in her first year. Then I started catching her at the mirror, practicing a variety of put-on facial expressions. Her favorite is a pout. If I catch her eye while she’s practicing, she’ll temporarily break character to flash me a quick, impish grin, and then it’s immediately back to the dramatics.

More recently, she acts out whole scenes from toddler shows. My favorite is a bit from Sesame Street with a person leaning out a window. She’ll thread her upper body through the frame of a dining chair, mumble a little in toddlerspeak, then call out “OK, I’ll be right down!” and pop back out of the chair….

Which is a long way of saying that I looooooove this picture that Mrs. Onion took during a recent NYC meet-up. Elsa was admittedly tired and crabby after a long lunch of chattering grown-ups, but as soon as she saw the camera, that pout grew twice as big. Mrs. Onion’s photo perfectly captures a quirk that will always give me warm memories of our two-year-old Drama Queen.

Do you have a not-exactly-traditional photo that reminds you of a loved one’s personality quirks?

Thanks to one and all for your kind messages of congratulation for surviving a year with Wallaby.  (Or were you sending her congratulations for surviving a year under our care?)  Not to overwhelm you with photo posts, but a few friends and family demanded messy-cake-face photos from Elsa’s 1st birthday, so….

We began the evening’s festivities by getting Elsa into her Birthday Shirt.  She then put on her party face.  (Which, like her game face, her greeting face, and most others, involves two bottom teeth and a RAWR.)

We had dinner with Mr T’s family at a tasty Malaysian restaurant, and then were off to National Geographic to see the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xi’an.  Elsa was tired, and the exhibition did not end well.

But after a few minutes’ rest in the car, she was ready for her birthday cupcake!  We purchased an almond-y yellow cake with chocolate frosting because the flavor was called Birthday Cupcake.  Not shown: Mommy and Daddy’s own cupcakes and large frozen yogurt, because we couldn’t let our child eat alone, and because the place serves both and, um, the yogurt had fruit on top and fruit is good for you.

Here’s the Before:

During:

And After.  Not actually as messy as I feared, given the chocolate frosting.  Though we did have to wash down the walls.  (By the way, according to The Internets, the best way to get chocolate out of clothing is to treat the stain with either dishwashing detergent or milk.  Who knew?)

Mmmm, chocolate-covered babies are tasty!