Happy Birthday Ava!

Last Sunday was the big celebration.....Ava turned 2!!

I know you've heard this before......I feel like it was yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital, but at the same time it feels like we've had her forever. We are now entering what is known as the "terrible two's." Ava is definitely testing me more and lately I've heard a lot of "I want it right now!" We also have been using the famous "time out" method, which I swore she would never stay in a time out, but it seems to work. Overall, Ava is a good toddler (so far) not too many fits, pretty easy to please, and very entertaining! Hopefully the next year goes as smoothly as the last two...especially with the addition of baby #2. Last Sunday we had family over for Ava's "Dora and Diego" themed birthday party. The party started out slow, she woke up from her nap just as people were showing up and for a little while she wouldn't leave my lap.

We thought opening gifts might loosen her up a bit and it did.
There were a couple of cards in the bunch that caught Ava's attention and she deemed them worth reading...other cards were tossed to the side so she could get to the good stuff.

Ava got her first load of dress up clothes and her favorite items are jewelry, crowns, purses, and shoes. She also now loves to take her wand and tap things around the house.....this act turns whatever it is into a princess.

Here she is trying out her new heels.

She is also at a stage where moving little people around and taking them in and out of houses, cars, etc. is very entertaining. For that reason she loves her new bus, which we now know holds most of her farm animals as well.

After gifts we moved on to the cake. I anticipated she would make the same if not a bigger mess than she did last year so this year we lost the clothes. However, she licked her fingers a couple times and tried using a fork, but did not make much of a mess. That is until we took her hands and shoved them in the cake to let her know it was OK to get messy.....she got the hang of it!

By the time the cake was done she was running around like her usual crazy self. I think she had a great time and she would like to say thank you to everyone who came to the party, thank you for the gifts, and thank you to all who sent cards and gifts in the mail...she loves getting mail.

Here's to another year...she's 2, she's healthy, and she's just as precious as day 1.