what you've all been waiting for: french braids

Welcome to the world of emma's lovely french braids. I've taken a few pictures over the past few days, so you can get the idea from a variety of angles and in a variety of situations. It really keeps the hair out of emma's face, which is great for both of us. My deepest apologies go to samantha for the "huh?" look on her face as I snapped the picture. Now samantha can reach the piano keys all by herself - something that is a favorite new activity now - so we often find ourselves listening to her recitals. Emma, on the other hand, is much more formal, crawling up on the bench, positioning herself just right, and then after every few notes, turning around at her audience, wondering where her applause is.
Here's a recap of emma's morning yesterday:

First, we went outside during mantha's naptime for mommy-emma time. Emma was so excited to see that one of our security guards had brought his brand new kitty to work. Emma sat and watched him pounce and bounce for a while...
...then was tickled to see him pawing at the chain of keys they were jiggling around in front of him.then we went down to the first floor of our building where one of the store owners has a large collection of exotic birds. emma's favorite are shao-shao and lili, who are parrots, and say "hello" to emma in annoyingly screeching asianese every time she comes in. The guy in the picture is the store owner, who is so kind to emma each time she comes in. He even gives emma peanuts to give to the birds, who open the peanuts with their beaks and chip away at the nut inside. We both are fascinated by them sometimes!Then on our way back up to our house, emma was captured by the fresh blooms of these flowers, right in front of our complex. she got in as close as she could and took a big whiff, then exclaimed,"oooh, that smells SO good!" :) But even after trying to be as gentle as she could, she still told me that "the flower was broken" after she touched it. So she took home a souviner to show daddy!Ok, so these pictures don't have much to do with french braids but hang with me. Yesterday was my clean-like-crazy day. A big springtime holiday is upon us here, and so I somehow subconsciously switched into spring cleaning mode. Specifically, my energies were directed to my daughters obscenely full closets. Out with the winter, in with the summer; out with 6-9 months, on to 12 months. Emma thougth that me bringing out all the clothes was an open invitation for dress-up, so she happily destroyed all my organized and well-folded piles of clothes about to be stored. In desperation, I was searching for something to keep her occupied, when I remembered...we bought her a princess dress-up outfit while we were in thailand that I had tucked away for a special time. The special time was now upon us. And boy, oh boy, did emma love to dress up. She loved her pretty princess dress, the accompanying high heels and her fairy wand. She clopped around all morning in her new outfit, waving her wand at all her toys and other dear items. Here she is, in all her princess glory (excuse the messy closet behind her):
And later, I caught her hanging out on her bean bag chair, opting for the casual, fisherman look...which, of course, every true princess must have. She was a little irritated that I ruined her private play moments with my obnoxious flash, but posterity calls...
And, mommy and emma's newest self-portrait...