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!