Happy 2nd Birthday Little A!

She is such a cutie pie! She is almost always happy and is communicating better and better every day. It's funny because a few days before her birthday it was like she had suddenly become a little girl. She seemed to suddenly understand things and was able to respond to them correctly. She also got a whole new energy overnight! She's always been an energetic child, but her energy has always been quieter; suddenly she discovered a hyper side of herself. 

She chose her outfit for her birthday and let me put pigtails in her hair.She wasn't that excited about taking pictures. She has recently started pretending to blow her nose, and that is what she is doing in the picture above.

Since we are close to family now we tried to have a birthday party, but everyone was either in Vegas or Disneyland. Maybe next year. We had cupcakes and ice cream after lunch. I did red velvet because red is her favorite color. She was super excited about them.

She didn't really get the blowing the candles out thing, but she loved the smoke in the air after the candles blew out. Then we gave her a cupcake and ice cream, and she refused to eat them, lol! Allan and I tried to convince her to eat it and then we stopped and said, "Why are we trying to force her to eat cake? That makes no sense."

So for her birthday she had two Starbursts.  Because that is what she wanted. She did eat some ice cream the next day, but she never would eat a cupcake. It looks too much like bread I guess.

After we got all of that cleaned up we opened presents. We got her a piano (I got a really good deal for it on cyber Monday). She LOVES to play the piano. Before her uncle left to serve a mission she would sit on his lap, and they would play together. She was absolutely thrilled with her little piano and plays it all the time.

She also got an adorable tea set from Grandma and Grandpa. We also play with that every day! She especially loves the spoons and forks that came with it. After presents Allan took her on a Daddy daughter date. They played outside for a while and then went to the store so she could say hi to everyone. :)

We had Mac-N-Cheese for dinner that night because she loves it.

The following day her birth family came for a visit and loaded her up with some more gifts. They gave her some cute clothes, Legos and a Lego wagon, a book that she now likes to read every night before bed, and a counting cookie jar. She has loved all of them. She really likes to mimic the cookie jar, and take her dolls on rides in the wagon.

We went out to eat with her birth family, came back for cake and ice cream, and then went swimming. Little A loves to be in the water. There is a fun kids pool near where we live. We went the week before with A's friends. There are two little girls that were born on the same day four days before A was. It has been fun to get them together.

Little A is still growing like a weed. She flew through size 24 month clothes and is now in 2T. Her feet are still an infant sized though. She is in between an infant 3 and 4 right now in shoe size. She is starting to look tall and lanky.

She really loves to play with her toys and is especially delighted when it's warm and we can go outside. She loves going to Nursery on Sunday. She is still such a nice sweet little girl. She loves to say "hi" to everyone.

We worked really hard on pointing at things, and she will now point to her body parts (nose, eyes, etc), and to animals and other things in books when I ask her too. She knows what most things are and is slowly starting to say what they are. She will make the elephant, dog, and bear sounds.

She is as stubborn as she is sweet. If she doesn't want to do something there is no making her do it until she is good and ready. Whenever we try to make her she regresses, but if we stop and let her go at her own pace she always does it on her own. She did this with crawling, walking, throwing food on the floor, and, for a short time, sleeping through the night. The most recent example of this is potty training. We stopped potty training because she started refusing to go. The more we sat her on the potty the more she regressed. We put the potty away and put her back in diapers, and are hoping to start again in a month or two.