Just a short post marking the 1/2 birthday for my little girl, mostly because I also need to mark the special occasion that she actually smiled for the camera!! That in itself is a reason for me to be excited because it rarely happens. She hasn't yet caught the 'little supermodel' bug and turned into a pose queen whenever she sees the camera. Usually I get a "cheese" as she turns away to continue whatever activity she has going on.
Anyway, here she is getting her height recorded on our growth chart for 2 1/2 years old!
1. All the letters of the alphabet!! This school year Sierra started attending the 2 year old class at Nashua Child Learning Center at our church on Mondays and Wednesdays. For a while I struggled with the idea of sending my only child to school/day care when I am a stay at home mom, but Rob and I had some very good reasons for deciding to give it a shot. I am so glad we did! She loves going and has given us so many surprises over what she is learning. Before Christmas she shocked us by correctly naming the magnet letters that she has always enjoyed playing with. So I started asking her what letter is this? over and over and she knew them! Her very favorite thing to do now is pick out letters for us which is why I bought this cute little alphabet cookie cutter set. Here is a video of her first go at making cookies...
2. The Little Einsteins. I have to admit that I like them a lot too :) For those of you without toddlers these are cartoons on the Disney Channel and they teach classical music and art in adventure settings. I got 3 DVDs for her to watch on our car ride to PA last month and she ONLY wanted to watch those 3 even though we had several other options with us. By the end of our vacation she had the opening song and much of the dialogue from several episodes memorized. I need to get a video of her singing that because it is super cute.
3. Balloons! I have no idea why since we never have balloons but she just LOVES balloons. Luckily we got one from our friend Jill after Chase's birthday party and she was in heaven! She just holds it by the string, nothing too exciting from my standpoint but it was the greatest gift to her.
4. Singing and Dancing
5. Being a princess. This is a new found favorite that we discovered while visiting friends in PA. We have no dress up clothes for her right now so when she got to share her friends clothes you could see in her face how absolutely beautiful she felt.
6. Chocolate pudding. Ok, anything chocolate, and yes she did get that from me. I do limit her chocolate intake but it is just so cute when she looks at me and asks to have "chloclate pudding".
I am one day shy of it being a whole YEAR since I last made a blog post. Wow, what happened to Vanessa the blogger?? Back in December I decided that my new years resolution would be making at least one blog post each month in 2010. Obviously that didn't happen but here is my fresh start just a few days into February. I'm not even going to try to make a 'catch-up' post for the majority of 2009 so if anyone needs to be filled in on any details you can feel free to email me. Ok, one minor detail to catch everyone up on...I'm currently 7 months pregnant with a little boy!
We've had an eventful start to this year that is worthy of sharing. After years of putting it off due to marriage, buying a house, having a baby, buying our second house, selling our first house (after we bought the second...that was a scary few months!) Rob has finally been able to get started on his Doctoral Program. I'm very proud of him for starting this long and hard endeavor. The first step in officially starting was to take a two week trip out to Kansas City for meetings with his advisor and lots of reading/research. So on January 14th the three of us drove down to my parents house in PA and a day later he flew off and left Sierra and I with two weeks to spend visiting with family and friends. I was in heaven! We had a great time bouncing back and forth between my parents house and my brother Andy's house, a little over an hour away. I was very proud of how well Sierra adjusted to so much change, several different sleeping arrangements, and many different play dates. She loved all of her 'new friends' (mostly all the new toys to play with is my guess). We had a great time with her cousins too. I could tell she was very comfortable with them because Kathy and I had our hands full breaking up toddler fights. Many times we were trying hard not to laugh at all of the drama the three kids were causing.
I had such a great time with my family and the many close friends living in the Ephrata/Lititz area. I wish the distance between New Hampshire and Pennsylvania wasn't so far!
We've been back home for one week now and with just under 2 months until our baby is due, we've got some work around the house to do! Rob just about finished up our bathroom renovation project today by adding the shelving for the linen closet. Then the other big things to do are repainting the dining room (upon my request...I'm just a little tired of the current color), a small painting job in the nursery, moving some furniture around to set up Sierra's new toddler bed and putting the bassinet and other various baby furniture in our room for the time being. Sierra gets a few more months of having her own room and then comes the fun part of transitioning the baby boy into that room as well. I hope she learns to sleep through crying quickly!
That is long enough for now I suppose. But here are two very amusing pictures of Sierra from today. She started asking me to give her pony tails and then kept handing me elastics so I just kept going! She loved it and didn't even want me to take them out for nap time. Rob and I were enjoying her new look all day :)
