Two or three?

Do you remember when you were a kid and always wanted to be older than you were? That's Lauren right now, she keeps insisting that she's "three" and not "two". To be perfectly honest, I think it's more of a game right now to her, but it's still kind of cute.

Lauren celebrated her second birthday last week. It was a fun day, kind of a quiet celebration as it was just the four of us, but it was fun nonetheless.

Alyssa and I woke her up in the morning singing "Happy Birthday"; she had her favorite breakfast - "toa" (toast) with "butter" (peanut butter) - and then was off to day care where she got a special book from Miss Gwen and Hope and got to wear a fun birthday hat.

Before we went to pick her up, Aaron and I got the house decorated with bumble bee decorations, and when she walked in the door, she said "woah" because there were streamers hanging down from the door frames. She loved the decorations and kept saying "bzzzzz" and then found her balloons. From there she found her pile of presents and dug in.

  She was delighted with her very own water bottle and a new pair of light up tennis shoes (Alyssa got those for her, she insisted that she needed a pair that lit up). She was also quite taken with her new suitcase.

The last present was a princess four wheeler; she tried it out and enjoyed it, but I don't know that she likes it quite as much as Alyssa does. But it's been a great present because Alyssa will drive it and Lauren will ride the big wheels!

 

We made her favorite dinner since it was her special day - tacos and black beans. And then finally it was time to bring out the birthday cake, a bumble bee of course for our very bzzzzzzzzy little girl.  She was such a big girl and blew out most of her birthday candles.

It's not the pretties of cakes, but it tasted pretty good!

Both she and Alyssa ate all the icing off their cupcake and then left most of the cake. I tried helping Lauren take the wrapper off the cupcake and this is what happened:

Lauren was able to talk to all of her family either via skype, FaceTime or the phone, so she did lots of talking that night!

One of the funny comments from the night came while we were talking to Auntie Stacy who asked Alyssa about going to the beach. Alyssa's response in her most dejected of voices, "Yeah, we'll celebrate Lauren's birthday again while we're there." It was hard on her to not be the center of attention and be able to do everything, but she loved celebrating her sister's birthday and eating her cake too!

We all enjoyed celebrating our "little Lauren", who is growing and changing each and every day. Although she's leaving the baby phase behind, she tends to be little in so many ways. At her two-year well check, she measured in at 31.75 inches (5-10 percentile) and weighed 24 lbs, 2 oz (20-25 percentile). She may be small in stature, but she has a big personality and doesn't let her size keep her down as she will try almost anything and climb up onto whatever she can to see the world from a higher perspective. We are so thankful for this little girl who both makes us laugh and challenges us and we can't wait to see what this next year has in store for her!