We celebrated Ellie’s 2nd birthday yesterday at WiggleWorks and it seemed like she had a great time with all her buddies! The beautiful thing about getting a bunch of little ones together is they make some very adorable photos. Click on the images for a larger slideshow:

At two years old, Ellie is definitely a sweetheart and her words (of which there are many) mostly melt my heart. She is also definitely in the terrible twos stage. Twice now she has just started yelling “no” over and over again for seemingly no apparent reason. It’s like she just likes the sound of it. I almost wanted to video record it because it was so funny.

Ellie’s favorite things to do include the following:

• Reading
• Singing, especially The Wheels on the Bus and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• Playing with her dollies
• Washing the windows
• Saying her ABC’s and counting to 10
• Playing with all her buddies at school and out of school

Right now we’re working a lot on cleaning up after we make messes, putting only food and drink in her mouth and listening. Listening is probably the most difficult of the three at this point.

Ellie really loves her little sister Piper. She gives her hugs and kisses all the time and for some reason especially loves kissing each of her ears.

In the last three months we’ve begun potty training. She’s mastered it mostly, with the exception of #2’s. A few weeks ago she also transitioned to her big girl bed, which has proven to illustrate her expertise at fleeing her room and running directly into Mom and Dad’s room to sleep with them.

It’s crazy to look back at how much has changed in the last year, but even crazier to think about the last two. Our lives have definitely changed significantly since having children.  While Brian and I always liked to keep a busy social and professional calendar prior to kids, our calendars are even more full now with things that don’t actually go on a calendar.

We think a lot about how we’re raising our kids and hope we’re doing the right things. It’s always hard to know. So far though, we’re very excited about what Ellie’s learned and the little person she has become. She’s really a love bug and we just want to hug and kiss her all the time!

Happy birthday little peanut!

P.S.: If you’re reading this it would really be great if you could finish this terrible two’s stage ASAP and sleep in your awesome big girl bed through the night…pretty please!