The 2 1/2 year old

Loves:
showers
flowers
playing dress-up
Mickey Mouse
Disney princesses
cheese
shoes
Grandma, Papa and Uncle Jared
Kung Fu Panda
Finding Nemo
car rides
swings
slides
dolls
bunnies

Does not love:
tomatoes
raspberries
leaving people she loves

She has an ever-increasing vocabulary. Some words she pronounces correctly, but others not so much. Some of my favorites:
guck (cookie)
muck (milk)
f--- (frog)
sowah (cereal)
Kuh (Claire)
Guh (Jared)
Sanny (Sandy)
hum (phone)
meh (banana)
pick (pig)
eck (egg)
teetee (tv)
peez (please)
Gamma (Grandma)
gusses (glasses)
camma (camera)
yuch (lunch)
showah (shower)
towah (towel)
bun (spoon)
pie-yay (potty)

She's small for her age and very active. She very affectionate with her baby brother (sometimes a bit too much) and is learning to share. She can count to 2 and can say every letter in her name. She's actively going through the terrible two's, throwing several temper tantrums a day. Her favorite words are "no" and "mine." She is very much loved and is such a blessing to have around.

Siblings

Claire loves her baby brother. She is so good to him. She gives him hugs and kisses all the time. Mace smiles and giggles at her, too. I wonder how long this sibling love is going to last. For now, I'm just going to enjoy it.

Christmas, etc.

Christmas was celebrated all month long, so I'm just going to put it all in one post cuz I'm lazy. Plus, I have 2 sleeping children at the same time and I don't know how long that's going to last, so I've gotta make this quick. I love Christmas and all the joy that it brings. Especially with young children. This Christmas, Claire had the flu (on Christmas Day - yuck) so that kinda put a damper on things, but we celebrated nonetheless. I wanted Mace's first Christmas to be special, so I made sure to really put a lot of focus on him as well.

Mace with "Cowboy Santa", aka Awesome OB/GYN
(There are more pictures taken with 2 more Santas, but one hasn't been e-mailed to me yet and the other was given to me as a hard copy [actually there are like a dozen] and I have yet to figure out the scanner part of our printer)

Helping Mommy wrap presents

Opening presents at Grandma and Papa's a week early (since Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa were going on a cruise over Christmas)

More presents

Christmas Eve, with an extra present under the tree

First Christmas

Incredible homemade bear for Mace - read the note attached

*Love*

Thanksgiving

I'm just now getting around to posting about Thanksgiving? Sheesh. I'm sure I'll catch up someday.

My little butterball

Thanksgiving feast

To quote a friend of mine: "Thankful doesn't even begin to cover it."

2 months

I have some serious catching up to do. For now, enjoy a picture of my sweet boy, taken 2 days ago when he turned 2 months.

Mace had his 2-month physical yesterday and was weighed at 14 lbs 13 ounces (3 ounces shy of 15 pounds!) and measured 23 inches long. 97th percentile for weight and 50th for length. That's one fat baby!

2

I'm obsessed with numbers. Therefore, I find it fascinating that Claire is (at this moment) 2 years, 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 2 hours and 2 minutes old.

1 month

Yes, I know I've been slacking. But taking care of 2 young kids plus working keeps me quite busy. My sweet Mace is 1 month already! He reminds me a lot of Claire. He's very good-natured and really only cries when he's hungry. He loves to eat and is quite the snuggle bug. I really lucked out with both my kiddos.

My little chunk in his monkey jammies

"Hi!"

The best part about his jammies is the monkey on his butt :)