TWO!

My baby girl turned two on Saturday. My, where has the time gone? Here she is at five days when we finally got her home from the hospital. We were so glad to get out of there we forgot to wash her face before we left. Oops.
By her first birthday she was walking and talking and laughing and loving life.

















But two is an entirely new story. Miriam is an AMAZING little two year old girl. If you'd like to know all the brilliant and astounding things she does and can do, just keep reading.

She knows all of her colors, foods, animals, body parts, and clothing. She knows where all of her toys belong, and can get things out or put them away with just a little reminding.

She can crawl, walk, run, gallop, and somersault. She can squint her eyes (especially if I tell her to keep her eyes peeled or to only look with her eyes and not her hands), do a wobbly walk, a cold walk (crouched down with her hands shaking), and adapts other animal walks at random times. She does a great horse impersonation.

She knows that if she gets up in the night, she can't watch TV. Or read books.

She knows Baby Eli is coming and is so excited. She's helped with his bed, his mattress, and his clothes. She remembers that for Christmas he gave her the set of Baby Einstein books she loves, and calls them her "Eli books."

She loves french fries and brown juice (root beer). She also loves green beans, peas, and broccoli. And chocolate milk. And even if she doesn't eat them, she'll still say she likes them.

Her language skills are great. She does have a tendency to put Ts on the front and/or end of words. "Milk" is "mit," "cat" is "tat," "stuck" is "tut," as is "truck." And sometimes she drops the Ts out of the middle of words. "Letters" is "ay-yuhs." But she's understanding how to string them together and create some great sentences. Tonight's big one was "Bubbles taste gross." You've gotta learn it sometime. The longest sentence I've heard yet was 6 words. "Big green truck take Mimi's diapers." Initially, this was traumatic but then she realized she didn't WANT her old poopy diapers and the garbage truck could have them. We now thank the big green truck when it takes Mimi's diapers.

She has a sense of humor that makes me laugh. She knows when she's doing something funny, and she'll keep doing it just to make us laugh. Sometimes she thinks things are funny when they're not, like running around the car in the driveway three hundred times instead of getting into her carseat. Or kicking her feet while her diaper is getting changed. But we're working on that.

She knows a lot of her shapes. She always gets circle, square, triangle, and star. She's a little iffy on oval and rectangle, but sometimes she remembers them.

She loves letters and numbers. She knows most of her capital letters and quite a few of the lowercase letters. She knows that her favorite letter is M, for Miriam, and dad's favorite letter is B, although I don't know if she knows why. She can count to twelve on her own and to 20 with just a little help. She can identify the numbers up to 10 (I haven't really tried her on the double digits), although she sometimes understandably calls the 9 a 6.

She totally understands the potty and the diaper and even tells me when she just went peepee. She gets marshmallows when she sits on the potty and fruit snacks when she peepees or poops in the potty, but because of Baby Eli, Mama decided to put off the serious "potty training" until a bit later.

Most of all, she loves her Mama and Daddy (although the other day she just called me "Mom" and it made me just a little sad), Baby Eli, and Zeke and JoAnn.

And most of all I just absolutely adore my little two year old!