Lily Turned TWO!

We've had a busy week! Some of my family came into town to visit and celebrate Lily's birthday (which was yesterday). We had a really fun, chaotic time and made some nice memories. Lily really seemed to enjoy spending time with her cousins, her aunts, and also her grandpa (as did I of course!).

We had a family birthday party yesterday, which went great. Lily actually blew out her candles! It was a proud moment for me. She is learning more things (of course) and having fun with all of her new toys (most of them have therapeutic reasons behind them, but she'll never know :0).

She did the most amazing thing yesterday. She was able to follow directions to give her ball to everyone in the family! Rarely has she ever followed the direction for giving anything to anyone. I'm not sure she quite understood what that word meant, but she does now! We've been having "ice cream parties" to enhance her listening and pretend skills. She really seems to like it. I have a lot of things I'm going to be working on with her, now that I have some more supplies (they keep adding up though and I'm running out of room!). We were reading some books the other day and one of them was a "words" book that has the objects with the written word underneath them. There was a picture of a toothbrush, and she leaned in and tried to brush her teeth with it! Then she tried to eat some of the food on the page as well. It was very cute.

Her crib went back up, but her bed tent is still up in her room and is utilized by her quite often. She really loves it and often gives herself kind of a time-out in there when she needs some quiet time. Lily has become quite the climber now and gets into EVERYTHING. She's got two lovely shiners, one on her eye and one on her chin, that make her look like she went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. She really craves height and is climbing everything to get it. I'm trying to figure out a way to give her what she craves, in a safe way, but how do you combine "height" and "safety"? Still mulling that one over.

Lily has her co-birthday party with her friends tomorrow at a bounce house place called Pump It Up. Her boyfriend's birthday is only a week after hers so we're celebrating them together! Here's hoping for a hopping good time!!! (I know, I know, that's corny, but it's late and I'm tired!)