Reyes Family Time: A report on our (almost) 2 year old, the comedian

Miriam has a promising future career as a comedian. She easily laughs at herself, and makes others laugh as well. She's really comfortable with people she knows and in places she knows, but she isn't comfortable with strangers. This morning at Home Depot, another little girl (also almost 2) tried to approach Miriam and talk to her, and the girl was really getting into Miriam's personal space. Miriam kept backing up, and the girl kept moving forward and saying "hi!". Miriam was looking up at me and saying "up, up!!" It was pretty cute. But when we are at home, she runs around with her arms flapping, puts animals on her head, falls down on purpose, jumps off her chair, takes off her pants and walks around in a diaper, responds by laughing and saying "meow" when you tell her you love her, and generally is a joy to be around. The girl is definitely strong willed, opinionated and likes to have her own way, so she's started to have occasional timeouts. However, we've started using a counting technique and giving her choices, and that helps a lot with her saying "no" or not listening to us. She continues to LOVE being a helper, and has assisted me with many dinners and baked goods. As soon as I ask her if she wants to help me cook/bake something, she runs to the utensil drawer and gets out a measuring scoop. She's an adorable little girl, and we can't believe she is going to be 2 in about a month! We love her to bits, and we feel so lucky to be the parents of this energetic, happy, comedic, sweet, helpful little girl.

She's on the move so much these days that we don't often get a lot of pictures, but we do have a couple from recent weeks. The last one is from right before we went to a birthday party earlier today. See how grown up she is looking?!?