Stella Turns 2

I'm on a roll! Posting about Malta was overwhelming enough, so I decided to document Stella's birthday in a separate post. As I mentioned in my last post, our day in Malta was also Stella's birthday. I had planned to have a little family birthday party for her when we got back where we would have cake and presents and everything, but I also wanted to make sure her actual birthday was special (because being in Malta for the day is totally not special enough by itself). After we got back to the ship, we planned to get together on our balconies before dinner to have a very small party for her. We bought her a little toy bus in Malta to give to her that evening. She found it before the festivities began, so we let her play with it while we waited for everyone to arrive.

We sang "Happy Birthday" to her and this happened:

She loves the birthday song and I thought she would be really excited. Apparently she doesn't like being the center of attention. We sang it to her again with me holding her and then she loved it.

Next she opened a few little presents. She always loves presents, so she was pretty excited about that.

After presents, we headed up to dinner. We opted to dine in another specialty restaurant that night, so we went to Qsine. It was quite a different dining experience and Stella had a great time. Our server was fantastic. At one point, I asked if I could just get a little bowl of strawberries for Stella. She brought out a whole plate, piled high, of mixed berries. Stella was super excited and went to town on it. She started eating the berries and I looked away to look at the menu or get some food or something for just a second and when I looked back, she had completely polished off the plate. She was so happy and just sat there all giddy in a drunken berry stupor. It was hilarious.

Our server in the main dining room was also really awesome. We told him the night before that we would be eating in Qsine that night for Stella's birthday. He made a point to get away for a couple of minutes to come up to Qsine and wish her a happy birthday. Stella thought that was great. We kept her entertained through the rest of dinner and then at the end they brought her a little cake and sang to her. Again, she was pretty excited.

After dinner we headed back to our room and found this in Stella's crib.

We had mentioned to our stateroom attendant that morning that it was Stella's birthday. So, when she did our turn-down service that night, she made a little towel animal for her. Stella thought it was pretty cool.

I think Stella had a great day. I would be pretty stoked if I got to spend any of my birthdays like that. So, we had a great day in Malta and Stella turned two. Next up: Sicily.