baby girl is two years old

I guess it takes a birthday to produce another blog entry.  But we’re so excited to celebrate our baby girl’s second birthday today. Here's a rundown on what she's up to.

Kendall is talking all the time and imitating words that we say.  There are no concerns with language development with our girl. Her current regular vocabulary is:

Hi, bye, night night

No, Yeah (said with much enthusiasm!)

Please, thank you, more

Milk, juice, tea, waffle, cracker, cookie, chicken, nana, apple, pretzel, vitamins, medicine

Baby, car, book, light, ball, George (the monkey), Pooh

Sun, dog, kitty, tickle, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, diaper, powder, bath, potty, poo-poo, pee-pee

All the major body parts (sticking her finger in eyes, nose, mouth and ears), counts one and two

Kendall remains a picky eater, but seems to get by on a base of cheesy scrambled eggs, chicken nuggets, waffles, mac and cheese, oatmeal, Cheerios, mixed fruit and veggie baby food, peanut butter, yogurt, milk and kefir.  She's easier to feed now than six months ago, but dinner time can still be a bit of a struggle.  Fortunately she no longer sticks her fingers in her mouth the whole time we're trying to feed her.  She insists on feeding herself and gets quite upset if we try to help.

She loves to play with her kitchen and serve tea and snacks.  Her big presents from us for this birthday were related to tea...  She is also fascinated with cars – the movie, her cozy coupe, big cars, small toy cars.  There is a "sculpture" made with buried cars at a restaurant near our church that she gets all excited about.  She’ll be begging for her license the day she turns 16.

Kendall has a couple of babies – her favorite being Baby Stella.  She pushes her in her stroller, feeds her and snuggles with her in bed.  She also has quite the menagerie of stuffed animals, many of which inhabit her bed.  She loves to snuggle with them and with Baby Stella at bed time.

She loves to read books (both with us and alone.) She loves to play with her ball popper, picnic basket and purse.  She dances whenever music comes on and loves music in general. 

She also loves the toys that attach by magnet to the refrigerator.  One of her favorite things in the house is the drawer full of sippy cups.  It's funny, I think she'd be OK if we got rid of the majority of her toys as long as we left that drawer alone.

Kendall is very good at playing by herself for long periods of time.  She especially enjoys being outdoors and we suspect that she will be daddy’s riding partner for years to come as Riley prefers being inside.

Kendall is also becoming more self sufficient. She always wants to walk rather than to be carried and is even wanting to tackle the stairs wherever we go.  It's a riot to watch her go down the stairs since her butt is nearly touching the stair as she's going down because her legs are still so short.  It's also nerve wracking if we aren't holding her hand.

She still naps a couple of hours in the afternoon and sleeps from 7:30pm – 6:30am, much to our delight. She's always been a good sleeper.

Kendall also gets along well with her brother Riley.  There are times when they get on each others nerves of course (especially when it comes to sharing toys), but overall they do very well together.  (By the way, this is our first picture of Kendall in pig tails.)  Here they are sharing a chair while engrossed in Curious George.

Our baby girl has been very different than our boy and most of the difference has been really fun.  She's turning into a very affectionate and fun girl.  We love her like crazy.  I'll close with a slideshow from birthday number two:

We love our two year old!

Jonathan