... Her Second Year of Life!

Well, a lot can happen in a couple of months... dreams are made, dreams are postponed indefinitely, and toddlers turn two-- the latter item being the most important for this particular blog. When asked, "Emmy, how old are you?" she responds "Two," casually holding up five fingers. It's a good thing number two was this year's birthday since "two" has been Emmy's favorite number and color for the last month or so. Super convenient.

So far Miss Emmy is taking the doubling of her years all in stride. She's learning bigger and faster everyday, and while her parents' minds are totally blown, she's like "Duh, dudes. I've always been a smart cookie." Emmy loves singing the ABCs (it's in italics for a reason), and in the last week, she's gotten them down pretty darn well. She's also totally catching on to colors. Two weeks ago she called everything "pink" and now she's referring to her favorite blankie as "green" and sorting toys into color groups (see butterflies below). She's more than occasionally speaking in complete sentences such as "I want bubby and night-night," and she's starting to use adjectives ("Sooo cute!") and understand emotions. Ryan and I almost melted into puddles of tears and sugar when we picked her up from the drop-in daycare a couple weeks ago and Emmy said, "Mommy. Daddy. Happy!" And we asked her "Emmy are you happy?" and she smiled and said "Yeah!" Christ, that'll make you go buy your kid ice cream and a puppy.

This last week, Emmy started Montessori for two year olds. She'll be going two days a week for about 6 1/2 hours each day. This enables her daddy to work at home without going bananas, her mommy to have some occasional "me time," and Emmy to have some consistent social time with other little peanuts. Aside from the weirdness of group nap time (what's up with all these kids laying all over the floor?), we think she she likes it pretty well. She's already shown her teachers her mad skills with utensils and drawing.

The pictures below are a random smattering from the last month or so. Please hold your horsies while additonal pictures and videos get uploaded to Shutterfly and Youtube, hopefully sometime this week. Enjoy!

Emmy was shown how to sort these once and then took it from there.

Stinking cute? Yes, I think so.

Yesterday's hike up to the Holland Lake Falls.

Leave this girl alone with an open drawer, and she'll come back
wearing two socks, one shoe, a winter hat and no pants.

Elmo has never tasted so good.

The reason for all that art training: the Elmo Cake
Emmy on the Big Creek hike, loving the sand and water.

Now understanding the concept of "saying cheese," Emmy will say "cheeeeese!"
to prompt us to take a picture of her, meaning that
we have many more successful pictures lately.