Miranda's 2nd Birthday Party

Miranda turns two tomorrow. We can't believe our baby girl is not a baby anymore. We had a super fun Elmo party for her today with some of her friends. She is such a sweet little girl. Everyday she does things that melt our hearts or says things that make us laugh. We are so thankful for her. Happy birthday sweet girl!

Bed head and Babies

Miranda's hair is finally coming in. We are so proud that she has enough hair to get bed head. Honestly, there have been more than a few mornings recently when Zane and I would have rather stayed in bed than face the day. But waking up to a little girl whose hair looks like this brings a much needed chuckle to our lives.

With little Babykins on his or her way, Zane and I have been talking to Miranda a lot about babies. We point them out to her when we are in public and tell her that Babykins is going to live with us when he/she grows a little bit bigger. While she is still clueless about how her world will be rocked this fall, she is starting to pick up on some of this baby talk. A few days ago, I put raspberries in her oatmeal, and she talked all morning about eating "raspbabies" for breakfast. Miranda was recently given a new-to-us bathing suit to wear this summer. She immediately requested to wear her "baby suit" and proudly ran around the house the rest of the day in her "baby suit." And every bird we see outside is a "baby bird," every tree a "baby tree," every flower a "baby flower." You get the point.

Speaking Up

Today at the park, Zane was climbing up the jungle gym, and Miranda shouted at him, "careful Daddy!" Then at bedtime, she was jumping on her bed and I told her to "sit on her bottom." (We have this conversation on an hourly basis) She immediately turned to her stuffed monkey and said, "monkey, sit on bottom."

Update

The past few weeks have been pretty tough ones for us. I have been feeling very sick with this pregnancy. In the long term, I know nausea and sickness are signs of a healthy pregnancy. In the short-term, I've done my fair share of whining and complaining. Miranda has also been fighting an ear infection. We went back to the doctor this week and started our second round of antibiotics. Hopefully this stronger antibiotic will clear up the infection. Unlike her mother, Miranda is an ideal sick patient. She has still been her happy, cheerful self. Zane has been an all-star, caring for two sick girls the past six weeks!

Since I haven't updated the blog in such a long time, here are a few things we have been up to recently. First, a cultural revolution is on its way in our home. Many of you know that Miranda loves Elmo with all her heart. Elmo used to be a shoe-in for Miranda's afternoon video. But in the past few weeks, Clifford the Big Red Dog has contended for that #1 spot in Miranda's life. Right now, Clifford and Elmo are in hot competition.

Miranda also loves cameras. She notices every time we take her picture now and wants to see herself on the camera. She also wants to take pictures. But greasy hands and a camera lens don't mix very well so Miranda has learned to improvise. Here, she's taking pictures with her sock.

Miranda is really into building towers too. She had a lot of fun with Daddy this morning building this big tower. When she put the last block on top, she shouted, "it's so big!"

Big News!

We are having a baby! When I was pregnant with Miranda, we called her "Baby Hart." We've decided to call this baby, "Babykins." Babykins is due October 6, 2011. We're all very excited.

Counting And More Silliness

Miranda has started counting, much to my delight. Ever since she was a little baby, I would count toys in her playroom, butterflies in her bedroom, and rocks that we picked out of the garden. She's never really paid much attention to me. I always thought it was one of those things that I did to make myself feel better, like I'm being a "real" mom because I'm teaching my baby (whatever that means). The best part about how she counts is that she almost never gets it right. Today, a friend of ours asked Miranda how many fingers she has. She replied, "four, five, six, seven, eight." When she does count in order, she almost never counts to the right amount. If there are three birds in a book we are counting, she counts to ten. If there are eight, she counts to ten. If there are two, she counts to ten. She makes me laugh every time.

Also in my last post, I mentioned that Miranda now sleeps in a big girl bed. I definitely miss being able to put her in her crib (aka cage). But the transition is still going well, considering Miranda is a very active little girl. We put her in the twin bed on Sunday and by Monday she had figured how to open closed doors. We are not very excited about this new skill. Every night and nap time, she always gets out of bed 5-20 times before she settles down. When she gets up, Zane and I always take her straight back to bed and tell her, "it's night time. Stay in your bed and go to sleep." Well, even as a 20 month old, the night time excuses have begun! As a toddler who still wears diapers, my favorite excuse so far is that she wanted to sit on the potty. Yes, on Friday night, I was putting her back into bed when she said to me, "sit on potty, please." Oh, if only she truly meant it!

Big Girl Bed

We moved Miranda to a twin bed today. She has been crawling out of her crib recently. Thankfully, she has never hurt herself, but she has fallen and scared herself and us. She did a great job at nap time and slept through her usual nap time. Hopefully bed time will go just as well. It's cliche, but we can't believe that our little girl is growing up so fast! It's just weird to walk into her room and see a twin bed instead of her crib :)