Elizabeth Turned 2!

Elizabeth knows what it means to be The Birthday Girl. For her special day, she wanted "pah-tee cake" and "pah-tee hats" and lots and lots of attention. Luckily, she got it. You know you are blessed when you can give a whopping three days notice for your daughter's second birthday party and a whole lot of people love your child enough to clear their calendars and come. Linda took loads of pictures of the fun, and I will add them to this post as soon as I remember to upload them to my computer.

The best moment of the party had to be when Elizabeth had finished opening gifts. I said, "Elizabeth can you say thank you?" She looked at me for a second, thoughtfully, then stood up and went around to every single adult at the party (there were about 10 of us) and gave them each a hug and said "Tanks!" to each one individually. It would be impossible to overstate the cuteness of that little moment.

So there's a two year old in the house again! She bounds up to me during the day and enthusiastically asks, "Hi Mom! What are you doing?" (with typical two year old pronunciation problems) and she replies, wide-eyed, "Oooooooh," no matter how mundane my answer is. She loves to play with Amanda, and stretches of peaceful playtime between the two of them are getting longer and longer.

She is very independent. "No, I do it" is a familiar refrain around our house.

She will not be left out of anything, ever. Every week when we take Amanda to dance class, Elizabeth demands to change into her "tu tu" and "tap shoes" as well and dances around the waiting room while her sister is in class.

A while ago I decided to make a more concerted effort to teach her colors then immediately regretted it. Within a day of learning them, she started dictating what she would wear. "No, mom, PINK pants, PINK pants." Geeze. It has already begun.

I guess this means potty training should be right around the corner. But I think I still have some lingering PTSD from my experience potty-training Amanda, and I'm pretty sure I'm the worst potty-trainer on earth, so I'm just not going to do it. Yep, you read that right. Not gonna do it.

Suzanne recently took the picture of Elizabeth at the top of this post. I don't know if it's the hat or her huge smile, but, to me, she looks more like my mom in this picture more than she ever has before. So of course it is now one of my favorites.