On turning two; we love her to pieces

(We took this video on her actual birthday...apparently she had some reaction to the sunscreen they put on her at daycare, which is why she looks so splotchy and ill! )

Fern turned two a couple of months ago already. It makes me kind of sad to see our baby growing out of toddlerhood and into childhood, but things are definitely getting more fun. Her vocabulary is exploding and she is putting sentences together. She says things like "I'll help you mama" and "I jump real high!!!!" She loves to sing songs from start to finish, especially her "a b c's", "apples and bananas", "twinkle, twinkle little star" and "go to sleep my baby", a lullaby that we played and sang for her day after day when she was a baby. She just switched from a crib to toddlerbed (yikes!), she still eats dirt, and she loves to dance. She asks to swim and/or swing every day now and she calls them both "swimming". She still uses a pacifier and drinks milk from a bottle at night, but she is the bravest girl I've ever known. She loves her stuffed animals as much as her babies now, swaddles them and feeds them. She still dislikes TV (yay?), she loves play food and tea, and has a hard time sitting through an entire book during the day. She loves gardening and talks about how the plants are "growing" and "drinking water." She is at her best when she is 'helping', she flitters about from thing to thing, and she has ALOT of energy. She gets frustrated when she can't do what she wants to do and can throw on heckuva tantrum. :) She is very independent. She loves "noonles" and avocados. We love her to pieces and can't wait to see what this year will bring.

We celebrated her birthday (twice!) when we were on our trip with the grandparents. When I was little, making ice cream was a tradition on birthdays. We intend to keep that tradition. Homemade ice cream is the best and Fern seems to agree:

Yummy salty ice.

Grandpa and Grandma make the best vanilla ice cream! Grandma makes the mix and Grandpa freezes it. {I have memories of the freezing process taking 'all day long', but in reality it takes less than an hour. It's crazy how time gets shorter as you get older}

Mas, por favor.

Another birthday tradition we started is breaking the piggy bank to see how much money Fern saved up over the year. We are trying to teach her (very early on) the importance of saving money, even the pennies. She has a piggy bank and Allen always drops his pocket change into her bank. Over the last year, Fern collected more than 50 bucks in change! We dumped it out (this one doesn't need to be broken) and Fern had much fun putting the coins into the little paper rolls. I actually took some photos of her doing just that, but they seem to have disappeared. :(

My mom had asked me to take a picture of Fern in a velvet red dress that I had when I was 2. So I did. Below is a picture of me in the dress, next to Fern in the dress, next to Al when he was 2. What do you think? Does she look more like Al or me? I think Al might win this one.

Happy Birthday sugar pop!

spending some time with Grandma

having a conversation

tickle the monkey

poke the monkey

kiss the monkey

Fern misses her Grandma and wishes that she would come to Guam for a visit. hint. hint. ;)

I think this is the last that I'll be posting from our trip.

the fourth

Very late, I know, but I thought the grandparents would want to see Fern on her very first ferris wheel! We went to the carnival, had some delicious Vietnamese street food made by a co-worker's mom, and then played some games like 'pick a duck out of a pond and you get some junk!' Some junk was smaller or bigger than other junk, but it was all big fun and I would do it again a million times over because Fern loved it. (Most of it as you shall see) She emptied our wallets with ride ticket purchases. I would have never guessed that she would go on these rides with Ska, without me, but she did. I was definitely more afraid than she was. And then... the tantrum. She threw the biggest tantrum ever. I rode with Ska on the Octopus (which left me spinning and nauseated) and she wanted to go, and couldn't understand that she was too small and felt betrayed that I would ride with Ska and not her. I could hear her through all of the screaming on the ride. In the end though, Ska was beaming, so it was worth it. At 9:15 or so, we watched an AMAZING fireworks display. A couple of times I said 'this must be the finale!' and it wasn't, so it was much better than I thought it would be. Fern called them 'flowers' in the sky and said a whole lot of 'whoa's' and 'oh man's!' and 'boom's'. Pretty funny indeed. And I got to catch up with a friend to boot. It was a good evening, that's for sure.

watermelon by day

carnival ride by night

day at the beach

Fai Fai...one of our favorite places to go.

Determined to go to the car to retrieve her 'milko'.

bricktown

First, we had dinner at Abuelo's to celebrate abuela Hambrick's 70th birthday! Then we took a walk along the riverwalk and Fern saw her very first ducks.

all I could get

Fern loved her cousin Lukas. She seems to look up to bigger boys. But the only chance I had of getting a photo of my super sweet nephew Lukas was when he wasn't paying attention, or when I was really far from him...

Once he was on to me, I got things like this....(holding a fenceboard in front of his face).

I have a feeling Fern might be the same way in a few years, so I am snapping away while I can! She is already starting to give me those sarcastic smiles when I ask her for a smile. Or she will just completely ignore me. It's a nice reminder to put down the camera sometimes. :)