Sugar and Spice

Our sweet 2 year old girl. Oh, how we love her. Yes, life these days is absolutely crazy. However, I am soooo thankful for our little girl and how mature she becomes each day. She's always been incredibly loving to her little brother. She's always asking to hug or kiss him, and it absolutely makes her day when she gets to hold him. She's fantastic about helping out with whatever we ask her to do. Thankfully she thinks throwing away diapers is a huge privilege! Just the past few weeks, I've realized how she is gradually becoming more flexible to stretching past naptimes and traveling different places. What a blessing this is!!

In fact, she is so helpful, sometimes it is to a fault. Today I was trying to get Jasper to go to sleep and she kept bringing me things to "help". His blanket (which I didn't need), a pacifier (which I also didn't need) a bedtime story. It was all so very cute, it was all I could do but laugh and thank her for her thoughtfulness.

We are trying to instill great manners into our kids, and I am so proud to hear "Thank You" and "Please" all the time, mostly without us having to remind her. We are currently working on "Yes Sir" and "Yes Ma'am" whenever we ask her to do something. Obviously this is going to take some time, as she is definitely a stubborn 2 year old, and never is that more apparent when she really doesn't want to do something.

We've learned lately that she is rather quiet at school. We find this hard to believe since we know how she is at home - most of the time we can't get her to be quiet! I suppose I'm glad to know she's not the class clown or the one causing trouble. I'm definitely glad to have her be the quiet one. It will be interesting to see if this changes over time. She's about to move into the PreSchool class. I'm glad for the change. Most of her friends from when she first started going to school are already in that class, and they said they really focus on trying to get the kids potty-trained if they're not already. She's doing great at home, however she rarely successfully goes on the potty at school.

This picture below is a perfect example of her stubborn side. I had just come out of Jasper's room from putting him down and she popped around the corner with his bib on. It made me giggle, and I asked to take a picture of her. The expression should give a good indication of how she felt about that.



We love to laugh at how messy she is -- even when it seems there's little to be messy about! (Though after we're done laughing, we are incredulous at how we're always cleaning her from head to toe!) The other day Jon gave her a tiny piece of chocolate chip banana bread. You would've thought she was eating a chocolate mud pie or something, with how she managed to get it all over her face and hands.

Here she is eating some chocolate pudding. I've been keeping it on hand to satisfy the late-night sweet tooth I have. I make it with skim milk, so I figure it's fine to let her enjoy it too. We don't give her many desserts yet so this is quite a treat.

A couple of our friends came over and brought us some cupcakes. We saved one for Harper the next evening after dinner. She pretty much just wanted the icing, and I was happy to get a cute picture from it.

We love our sweet girl and are enjoying all the giggles, spontaneous songs, and unrequested hugs she gives us. What an amazingly adorable little girl God has blessed us with!