Cupboard treasures

I was putting dishes away and found this in our cupboard. The milk had to have been in there a couple of days.

What are children doing to my brain?

We have kids for our own enjoyment

Olivia in Emily's new sunglasses.

This just cracks me up.

Never a dull moment

This game lasted quite a while...

Sorry you have to turn your head sideways.

Relaxing

Emily is finding that there are some perks to having a little sister.

Cinderella, cinderella

Now that Emily is practically two, her official chores in this household begin. We decided to start her off with something easy... cleaning the floors.

Now all she needs is a fairy godmother.

Emily's (early) birthday celebration

Emily's birthday is really the end of May, but us girls are leaving for Texas tomorrow and Daniel is leaving for Mojave Viper. For those of you in the civilian world, that means 5 weeks without Daddy. Sad news. At least the first two weeks we will be in Texas, then we only have 3 weeks without him at home.

Anyways...

Since we won't all be together for Emily's birthday, we decided to celebrate it this past Sunday. We didn't do anything big -- we just let her open her presents. She woke up from her nap that day all whiny. I took her into the kitchen and showed her the "Happy Birthday" balloon we got her and explained that we were going to celebrate her birthday. I told her that two years ago she was born and on her birthday each year, she gets to open presents. Then she looked at me, and slapped me. No joke.

That is not at all how I saw it going in my head.

After the initial shock of getting older set in, we had some fun. She absolutely loved playing with her balloon...

After dinner, we let her blow out candles on a cupcake. Although it took her a couple of tries, she loved blowing the candles out so much that we had to blow them out twice.

All she was doing was licking the icing, so I broke the cupcake in half to show her she could also eat the goodness under the icing. That apparently upset her because she then crumbled the cupcake into a million pieces, poured it off her plate, and refused to have anything else to do with it.

After we cleaned the area, we let her open presents. We got her a couple of books. She LOVES books.

Since she loves girly accessories, we got her a pair of her own sunglasses. They are quite ridiculous looking. They are just mini adult sunglasses. We will see how much she chooses to wear them this summer.

She also got a cool new swimsuit for Texas and having fun outside this summer.

Last, but not least, we got her a new pair of sandals. I knew buying them, they would be a little big, but they were too good of a deal to pass up.

I completely forgot about her club feet, though. In the past, I have had to get all her shoes at Stride Rite because she doesn't fit in to normal shoes. We got lucky with one pair from Old Navy recently, so I completely forgot the issues we have. Turns out, that although they should have been too big, she couldn't even cram the height of her foot into half the sandal. Way to go Mom.

Quirky behavior

Emily is turning out to be a very quirky child, which I secretly love because I am the same way. She definitely makes us laugh every day. Back when the Wetzel's were here for Easter, we were getting things ready for dinner and Emily was playing on her rocking horse. We looked over to see this...

She was nonchalantly riding her horse, with a headband around her neck, a headband around her head, and a pacifier in her mouth. She doesn't even suck pacifiers. This is just the one the hospital sent us home with that she was playing with.

I love that she does weird things like this, and doesn't even do it for attention.

Yet.

Makeup

With loving all things girly, it should be no surprise that Emily loves makeup. She always wants to participate when I get ready in the morning, so I usually give her a makeup brush to play with. She apparently found some lip gloss under my sink the other day, and luckily, I caught her before things go too out of control.

That was one sticky mess to wipe off.

Diaper duty

Emily is now attempting to change her own diapers...

With a few difficulties, that is.

Sister Time

Yesterday, we hosted the neighborhood coffee. I realized, besides baby toys, we have hardly age appropriate toys for Emily's friends. Emily spends most of her time a. reading, b. playing dress up, c. playing with her baby doll, or d. cleaning things with a wipe. The problem is that a. reading during a playgroup would be lame, b. boys don't want to play dress up, c. if anyone touched Emily's baby doll she would freak out, and d. nobody has a love for wipes or cleaning quite like me child. The kids spent the whole coffee running up and down my hallway. Whatever works, right?

I'm glad my child loves reading as much as she does. I don't know where it came from, though. We read a couple books a day, but I don't think I push it more than other moms. I just can't relate because I spent most of my time as a little kid doing science experiments or solving math puzzles. No joke. Whatever the reason, I'm glad she enjoys it. Plus, it provides for some sister bonding time.