You've Had A Birthday, Shout Hooray!

Lydia is now officially 2 years old! Part of me wants to shout "Hooray!", but another part of me is sad. She seems to have grown up overnight. Everyone always told me to treasure each moment possible because it goes by so fast. And I feel like I really tried to, but there just doesn't seem to be enough moments before they grow up! Each stage has had its amazing moments (coupled with the trying ones, but we'll try to forget those.) And she has grown into a beautiful, sweet little lady. I've always considered her to be quite spunky and opinionated, and that has grown even more. But so has her sweetness, her cuddliness, and her desire to share everything with the world around her.

I couldn't possibly name all of the new things that she has done and developed since last time I wrote about her, but here are a few of the highlights:

*She loves to take care of her babies. She now keeps her babies in bed with her, makes sure they have their own blankets, and feeds them a bottle before she will go to sleep. Sometimes she thinks that bedtime means bedtime for her babies, not for her. And this results in some fun 2-year old tantrums. But she loves her babies. Hopefully this means that she will be excited to help take care of her baby sister soon!

*She talks up a storm! I couldn't possibly name all of the words that she can say now, and she's saying new ones everyday. She constantly amazes me with the things that she knows. My favorite words that she says right now are "hadoo" (hiding), "Dove you" (I love you), and "kiss it" (referred to when she needs a kiss on some obscure owwie). Probably my least favorite one right now is "No yike it" (I don't like it). This phrase is used quite frequently lately and refers to almost anything I feed her before she's even tasted it. She'll even say it to the tried and true foods that she's always liked. Sigh. Mealtimes seem to be a battleground lately. Oh, and one of my favorite things that she does lately is say her own prayers. We help her in saying them, but instead of repeating us like she used to, she adds her own commentary. Most of the time they involve praying that Daddy will come home, or blessing someone in our family. It's very sweet.

*She is taking the reigns in her potty-training progress. We bought her a couple of potty seats to go in our bathrooms and she has been taking it from there. She tells us quite frequently when she needs to go potty and we don't have to change her diaper very often. She almost always goes #2 in the potty (I guess she's realized how much more comfortable it is not carrying that around anymore). We've bought her several pairs of panties and we will go full gear as soon as I have a stool that will help her reach the toilet on her own. My guess is that she'll be trained within a month. Hooray! I won't have to buy diapers for 2 kids at the same time!

*Here are some of her favorites:

Favorite food: hmmm...I could toss out several of those. Among the top would be pizza, spaghetti, chicken nuggets, apples, oranges, bananas (or other fruit), broccoli (surprising, huh?), edimame beans (double surprise?), corn on the cob, and, of course, anything sweet.

Favorite Songs: Old McDonald, My Hands, and Personal Penguin (Sandra Boynton)

Favorite Toys: Nothing could possibly replace Pooh, but her babies do come into a close second. Her other favorites are her kitchen/play food & dishes, games (Cootie, Mancala, Hungry Hippos & HiHo Cherry-O) and books.

Favorite Movies: Most anything we put on at the moment. She especially enjoys "Goge" (Curious George), "Tigga" (any of the Winnie the Pooh movies), and the "Boods" ("Birds" aka Rio). Though she doesn't complain when we stick in most any other animated movie.

Other random things to note:

*Lydia is developing a little bit of phobia to anything messy. For example, if anything gets on her hands, then she panics until it gets cleaned off. If anything spills or gets a couple drops on the floor, she has to have it cleaned up. If there are a couple of fuzzies floating ni the bathtub then she will panic and can't get in until they've been removed. It hasn't ever gotten out of control and we've learned to just provide her with a napkin at mealtimes. Right now it's more in the funny and sometimes roll your eyes phase.

*Her stats right now are 36 inches tall (95th percentile) and 29 1/2 lbs (75th percentile). She's very tall for her age and it sure shows when she's with all her friends who are mostly a little older than her.

To celebrate Lydia's birthday, we threw a birthday party with a bunch of her friends. (Conveniently her birthday landed on a Saturday this year.) Of course, this was monkey themed. This little lady LOVES monkeys! So, I made a monkey cake, monkey/banana/jungle decorations, and a cute outfit for her with a monkey on the shirt. We played "Hot Banana". This was kinda like hot potato, except we gave each kid a prize as they got out. And then we took the kids on a jungle safari. Unfortunately it was raining bad and we couldn't do it outside, so we improvised in Lydia's room instead. We set up jungle animals around the room and each kid was given a paper with a picture of each of the animals. As they found the animals they got to color them on their paper. Then we sang Happy Birthday and Lydia blew out her candle. It took her a few tries to get enough of a blow to actually put out the flame, but she enjoyed it thoroughly. Then she opened all of her presents. I think in the future we'll get her less presents on her birthday if we have a party, because she got more than enough from all of her friends and family (Thanks so much!). She loved it though and didn't get upset when her friends wanted to join in the excitement of unwrapping the gifts.

After a yummy breakfast, Lydia opened her family gifts. This is her pretty new dress from G&G Anderson. So cute!

You may not be able to tell from this picture, but she loves to play games and was really excited for her new ones!

Lydia was also in love with her new addition to her kitchen! She has been playing with this constantly since she opened it. Thanks G&G Anderson!

Lydia's cute birthday cake! My cake decorating class paid off! I'm really proud of it!

Lydia and David doing the Jungle Safari around her bedroom. She enjoyed identifying and coloring each of the animals. I was impressed with how well she did!

Very softly blowing out her candle.

And then opening her presents at her birthday party (with the help of some friends:).

After her friends all left, Lydia cuddled up on the couch with her new pizza and all the accessories. I don't quite understand the cuddliness of it all, but apparently it made sense to her. Maybe a midnight snack?

After a much needed nap, Lydia got to talk to Grandma and Grandpa Anderson on the phone as they sang Happy Birthday. Then we went to McDonald's for dinner (kids this age sure are easy!) and (the real excitement) went to the new Petsmart on the island to get her a fish. We hadn't realized though that you should have the filter running in your tank for at least a day before putting the fish in it, so we got all the supplies and just admired the fish. Right now Lydia looks in the tank for the fish and can't understand why she can't find them. We'll go get her some this week :).

Overall, I think that she had a very exciting birthday! We loved spending the day celebrating our Little Princess and are so excited for many years to come! Happy Birthday Sweet Lydia!!!