Our sweet girl is 2 years old!

It has been a hectic, busy couple of weeks since I last published a blog post, and all of a sudden Miriam's birthday is here, and she is 2!  Our hectic weeks included Mario out of town for a week (he got to go to Arkansas for work), a car accident (only Mario was involved, not his fault and he wasn't hurt), fixing our car, getting a rental car, me getting sick (and in fact, I'm still sick) and Miriam being so sick last weekend we had to postpone her birthday party.  Whew - I'm tired just reliving all that as I'm typing!

Now onto the real focus of this post - our 2 year old girl.  :)  2 years ago, at 9:36 in the morning, our world changed forever when Miriam was born.  Since then, we've had many sleepless nights, family giggle fests, tons of games of hide and seek and many, many moments where we've reflected on how thankful we are that Miriam is our daughter.

Miriam is a spirited girl.  She loves to play games (hide and seek, tickle feet, toss and catch), help us around the house (bake/cook, do yard work, do laundry, empty the dishwasher) and be outside.  She's a great sleeper these days, and puts herself to sleep after a long bedtime routine with her daddy, that involves milk, several songs and multiple books.  She knows a ton of words and is always talking all day long, and has mastered when and how to correctly say "thank you".  It is so cute to hear her say "ank oo" whenever you give her something or do something for her.  She can identify the letters Z, Y, B and O, and some of her colors...purple and yellow most of the time, and sometimes green and blue.  (She's such a little joker though, that she answers purple first whenever you ask her about a color, and then laughs.)  Her favorite foods continue to be all kinds of cheese and black beans.  (She's discovered my special extra sharp vintage white cheddar and loves it as much as I do...it is hard to share sometimes when she used to be happy with regular old cheddar!)

We have her 2 year check up tomorrow afternoon so I'll be able to report back with her stats after that, but she's big enough that we turned her carseat forward facing now.  (She was getting really crunched rear facing and also getting carsick, so we thought it was time to turn her around.)  She really likes facing forward and always points out whatever she sees (trucks, dogs, buses) and often says "wheee!"  I've been trying to teach her about red lights and green lights too, and she often says "GO!" when she sees a green light.

Here are some pictures from the recent month, as well as her birthday cake from today.  Hopefully I'll be posting again this week with an update about her stats and her doctor's appointment!