Happy Birthday, Big Girl!

Sweet Halle,

You are two years old today! Daddy and I wish you the happiest of birthdays, sweetheart.

At 24 months old, here are some of your favorite things:
- Breakfast. You love eating cereal with Daddy or eating English muffins with peanut butter or bagels and cream cheese with Mommy. You also love blueberry waffles, yogurt, scrambled eggs with ketchup, and oatmeal. You are a true breakfast lover.
- Watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. And especially watching the "Hot Dog" song and dance at the end. You usually make me rewind that part three or four times. We also have the song on a cd in the car (thanks Keri!) and you ask to hear it often. And repeatedly.
- Bringing Mommy and Daddy their shoes. And insisting we wear them. (We seriously have to hide our shoes from you if we want to go barefoot!)
- Wearing your shoes. You are a girly girl in many ways, and your love of shoes is definitely one of those ways.
- Bringing Daddy beer. Almost every time I open the fridge to get you juice, you ask if you can bring Daddy a beer. It's really quite adorable.
- Pretending to drink Daddy's empty beer bottles. I have to get this on film soon. You tip the bottle back as far as you possibly can to get every last drop, make the satisfied "ah" sound when you come back down, and always have the biggest smile on your face.
- Commanding and praising Biscuit. You have all of our Biscuit commands down perfectly. "Come, Bisk!" and "Good Girl, Bisk" are among your favorites. You also have the cutest one-sided conversations with her. "Biscuit, want a treat? Yes? Ok."
- Dancing. You love to dance to your Silly Songs cd, or just about any kids' music you hear. And some grown up music too, if it has a good beat. And the Ghostbusters theme song. :)
- Watching Ella and Leah and "Fishy" videos. You ask to watch Ella videos every single day, and you've named all your favorites and request them by name. You also love Leah's "Hop" video, and every video you've seen with Erin in it. You've nicknamed Erin "fishy" on your own after watching a video of her in the water with her Mommy.
- "Riding" your Dora bike. You don't pedal yet, but you love to scoot around on your bike using your feet. You turn the music on and think you're really hot stuff while you cruise around the house. :)
- Stickers. Stickers. Stickers. You cannot get enough of stickers.
- The color yellow. Which you pronounce "yeweee". I have to admit I will be quite sad when you figure out how to say yellow correctly. I absolutely love to hear you say yewee. :)
- Colors in general. Although yellow is definitely your favorite, you just recently learned colors and you excitedly point them out quite often. You correctly identify red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown and white.
- Making animal noises. Especially "gobble, gobble, gobble."
- Playing baby with Mommy. You ask me to hold you like a baby while rocking you and singing "Rock-a-bye Baby" quite often. You almost always ask for "more Rock-a-bye baby" at least two or three times before you've had enough.
- Singing what sounds like either "Jingle all the way now" or "Twinkle little star how." You just start singing this out of nowhere all the time. Recently you've started singing "No more monkeys jumping on the bed" out of nowhere too and wag your finger as you sing, just like Mommy does. :)
- Macaroni and cheese. And hamburgers. And tacos. And Arby's roast beef sandwiches. And Cheetos. And cookies.
- Juice. You drink milk and water too, but if it was up to you, you would only drink juice. All day long.
- Puzzles. It amazes me how much you enjoy puzzles. You mastered puzzles intended for children 3 and up well before your second birthday. You are the kind of child that will sit still and play with the same toy for a long time, which makes solving puzzles a fun challenge for you.
- Taking off your clothes. You've discovered that you can take off just about any article of clothing by yourself and you challenge yourself to do so quite often. You also don't like sitting in a wet diaper and have been known to pull down your pants and take off your dirty diaper. You will be potty trained very, very soon.
- Being polite. Ok, I don't know if this is really one of your favorites, but it is certainly one of mine. You are really good at saying "Thank you, Mommy" and "Bless you" unprovoked and appropriately. You rarely say "please" without me asking, "What do you say?" but you certainly know the answer and quickly say "please" when I do. I often follow this with, "And what do you give Mommy?" You exclaim, "a kiss!" and give me a kiss. Then you get whatever you were asking for. Usually juice or stickers. :)
- Reading "The Ear Book" with me. This is one of those trying-to-be-Dr. Seuss books that I used to think was pretty sad until you started requesting it every night. It is now one of my favorite books! You read along with me on certain pages and act out certain pages. One page says, "We hear hands clap, and fingers snap, and feet go tap, tap, tap, tap." You do all of these things, including standing up at the end to tap, tap, tap. You REALLY enjoy this and jump all over the bed afterwards (we always read this book in Mommy's bed). It's my absolute favorite part of our night night routine.

Once again, happy birthday, baby! I love you so, so, so much!!

Love,
Mommy