Happy Birthday Holly!!!

Happy second birthday to Holly! We've been practicing saying how old she is and holding up two fingers, but Holly doesn't quite have the dexterity yet to hold up only 2 fingers by herself.

You would think that with her birthday at the END OF MARCH that the weather wouldn't be so crazy, but we woke up to snow on the birthday girl's big day. Granted, it was just a little, but still!
Holly had her usual cereal for breakfast and actually gave me a real smile when I asked her to, although I had to wait until breakfast was almost gone before she showed any interest in doing so.

After breakfast, I let her have one present. Mostly because I couldn't figure out how to wrap it and also because it kept making noise, so I decided that having a new toy to play with all day was better than having to wait until right before bedtime for every single present. She was very serious about feeding her baby!

At nap time, I baked Holly's birthday cake and got it frosted and decorated. Every year (all two of them) I make two cupcakes in addition to Holly's big cake. One the cupcakes, I write Mother and Father in Chinese. Although birthdays and other important occasions are days of celebration, it is always important to take a few moments to remember that this is probably a sad day for her birth family, and at some point in Holly's life, she could very well feel that her birthday isn't a day to celebrate but is a day of sadness and mourning what she has lost. So, on this special day, not only do we celebrate Holly's birth, we honor her birth family in every way we can.

I had the perfect (for my artistic ability) cake decorating going until the blue oily part of the frosting glopped out of the tube on the "thd" of birthday. I was SO annoyed!!! I kneaded the tubes of frosting just like they said, but I guess I didn't get the blue mixed up enough, so Holly ended up with a big blob smack in the middle of her cake. (Yes, I know she didn't care because she doesn't know any better, but it irritated me for the rest of the day!)

We all had a tasty dinner of teriyaki chicken, rice, asparagus, and fruit salad. Holly, however, just picked out the bananas and played with the rest of her fruit salad. She ate all her rice, as usual, though.

After clearing the dishes, she got right to work opening presents. She definitely knows what to do, but she made me laugh every time she would rip some paper off, hand it to someone, then say "thank you" for taking it and helping her clean up! *Sigh* I'm guessing that doesn't last long, does it?

She stopped to play with every single present she opened before moving on to the next one, even if she had 2 or 3 piled up in front of her. Here she is reading "The Little Engine That Could."

She got a fabulous BIG purple ball from Aunt Barbie & Uncle Bruce. She had a great time playing with it in Nana & PopPop's house - bouncing it, kicking it, rolling it. Now that it has come home, it will definitely be an outdoor toy!

Holly also got a super cute cow lawn chair. She spent her afternoon today sitting in the chair watching her one of her new Ni Hao Kai Lan videos that she got.

The Dora floating bath toy that she got was a H-U-G-E hit!!! You pour water in the top of the palm tree and Swiper shows up in a little window in the trunk of the tree. I told her that Swiper was in the tree but would only come out when she took a bath. So, for the rest of the evening, Holly would ask "Swiper bath?" I would think that we had distracted her for a few minutes, and out of the blue she would ask "Now Swiper bath?" Yes, she did end up getting her bath to play with Dora and see Swiper in the tree!

I know she looks so serious in this picture, but it had been a long day and smiles were just not forthcoming! She has her hand on a new softball set with a pink bat, 2 pink balls, and a batting T. Ya gotta have priorities, ya know?

After presents, we finally got around to singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles on her cake. Even though we had been practicing blowing, Holly wanted nothing to do with that and I ended up having to blow her candles out for her. Maybe next year...

The best part of Holly's day may have been the ice cream. I had to really stir her cake into the ice cream or else she would have just skipped that part all together! The girl really likes her ice cream!

Besides breakfast, this is probably the best smile I got out of Holly all day long. And I think its just adorable...but I may be biased. :-)

We all had a fabulous time celebrating Holly's birthday. I can't believe my baby is two! Its amazing to watch her grow up and I am so fortunate to have the honor of being her Mama! Happy Birthday, sweet girl!!!

Tomorrow morning, we leave for Seattle. I'll post pictures of our great adventure when we get back.

Ready to Go!

Last weekend while we were running errands, we stopped at the pet store in hopes of seeing some new puppies and kittens. They usually have at least some cute little critters to look at and maybe even pet. I guess it was the calm before the spring storm of new babies being born, because there were just 2 really ugly puppies that you couldn't touch at all and one Saint Bernard who was more interested in sleeping than doing anything, including opening his eyes!

Holly did find a few bunnies to look at but she couldn't pet them. Overall, it was a pretty disappointing visit to the pet store and we didn't stay long.

Then we went to the mall so that Holly could run off some energy in the play area. She stopped at the cars that you can ride on and play in. She crawled up into this hot dog truck and had a great time! She drove and pressed buttons to order food and even shared with another little girl that we met there.

As I was standing there watching her, another mom was watching her daughter plan on the next car over. Her little girl, Kiera, was A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!!! We visited for as long as the girls played and ended up exchanging phone numbers so that we can get together for play dates in the future when we come into Spokane. Here are the girls together on one of the cars. Its a little blurry because I took it on my phone and not with the regular camera.

After Kiera and her mom left, there was a boy who got on the same car. His daddy put a quarter in so he could ride, but he started crying. Daddy had to take him off and go away from the moving cars. Holly decided she needed to be in the car and finish the ride for the little boy. She loved it, and at least that guy's quarter didn't go to waste!

The exciting thing that is happening for us is that when Van goes back to Vietnam in June, Holly and I are going to visit her family!!! I sent our passports to the Vietnamese Embassy a few weeks ago to get our visas and got them back just recently. Then, Van & I got online and booked our plane tickets. We wanted to make reservations right away because we wanted to make sure we would be flying on the same flights together.

I don't know who is more excited - Van because she doesn't have to fly back and go through airports alone, her parents because they get to meet us (read Holly, who they love already because she can count to 10 in Vietnamese and say ice cream and I love you), or me because we get to visit someplace new.I can't wait until June gets here! Of course, while we are there, I will try to blog!

Relaxing at Home

After being at basketball all week, I felt a little guilty about the fact that Holly hasn't had much time at home to just play and do what SHE wants to do. Its been all about me the last few days and I wanted to go to basketball!

So, one of the first things Holly wanted to do when we got home was to take most of her clothes off. After emphatically throwing them on the floor, she then decided to pick them up and put them in the dirty clothes. We have been working on this quite a bit and she knows where to take them (my closet) when I tell her to go put them in the dirty clothes. However, this was all of her own doing and she was very proud of herself. She came and told me that she was going to do that, then told me that she "did it" when she was through. I had to go check, just to make sure that she put them where they belong. Here is what I found:

The light sweatshirt in the pile of darks...And the dark jeans in the pile of lights. At least she is sorting them! This just completely tickled me, so I had to share.

The Holly announced that she wanted to play play doh. So, I got out the table and chair, all the play doh toys, and put a tablecloth underneath because she likes to break it into little tiny pieces and throw them on the ground. She played

and cut with scissors, which she had to show me - "Mama! Watch scissors! Cut! I did it!"

When I went over to start picking up all the little pieces of play doh, Holly came down to help, but got distracted by the zipper on the table cloth. (Its the kind for an outdoor table with an umbrella on a pole, hence the zipper) She unzipped the zipper. Took the tablecloth apart. Yelled for me to put it back together again.

And zipped it back up again. She is VERY in to zippers right now. There's no hope for a sweatshirt to stay on all day long when there is a zipper on it. She really wants to put every zipper together herself to zip it up, but doesn't have the dexterity yet. It irritates her that she has to ask for help from Mama on that part!

Then, she thought she might do a little shopping. She has some of Van's graded homework, a telephone, her purse, and God knows what else in her shopping cart! She had a great time going from room to room getting whatever she felt like she wanted in that cart of hers.

She also had me put on her green skirt that Darla got her last year for her birthday. She is getting to the age of liking dress up. They play at school and now she is wanting to do it at home.

The first thought I had when I took that picture was "Oh, no! If I put that on my blog, someone is going to think that I dressed her that way ON PURPOSE since her skirt actually matches the only article of clothing she was wearing." Then I looked at the picture closer and realized that even if I had done it on purpose, she looks so darned cute that nobody would really care! LOL!

State B Basketball

We spent most of this last week at the State B Basketball Tournament in Spokane. Both our girls and boys teams made it to state. They both played well, but got knocked out in the second round. Holly likes to watch basketball, but 3 days of the state tournament also lends itself to doing other things when you are an almost-two-year-old. One of her all time favorite things to do is play with an empty water bottle. Unscrewing the lid, taking a drink, and putting the lid back on is apparently a LOT of fun. Until you drop either the lid or the bottle, and Mama won't let you put your mouth on the nasty, dirty bottle anymore.
Eating is always one of the highlights of any outing. Holly's babysitter gave her some chopped up apple pieces soaked in Sprite, which stayed fresh for 2 days before even a hint of brown started showing! The great thing about State B is that you can take your diaper bag into the Spokane Arena without it being searched closely, and they don't really care if you bring snacks for little kids. So we brought loads of them!

Playing with the seat arm that is broken is also fun. Especially one Holly realized that Mama was a bit paranoid that Holly would smash her little fingers in it when it was coming down. All the more reason to play with it!

Washing the seat chairs was also a great thing to do. One wet wipe can be entertaining for an entire half of a basketball game, as long as people don't come sit in front if you! How can you go wrong with encouraging this kind of behavior?

Sitting on other people's laps is always fun, too! Holly pretty much loves everybody who gives her any attention, and is willing to sit on most people's laps, at least for a while. These guys are our neighbors, so she sees them a lot.

Holly also has impeccable timing when it comes to falling asleep during a game. She either falls asleep right away, and wakes up if I try to lie her down on the floor, so I end up holding all that sweaty, dead weight for the entire basketball game, or she waits until the fourth quarter, when she will only get a short nap before we have to leave again. Either way, she's getting a nap in, so that is the best part!

We had a great time. I got to watch lots of basketball and Holly got a lot of other stuff done, as well as watching some basketball!

Mensa, anyone?

In case anyone was wondering, I have the most brilliant child on the planet. I'm not telling you this because its just my opinion. I was informed of this fact by Holly's daycare provider today. Apparently she was playing memory/concentration with the other (older) kids today with 12 cards (6 pairs) and Holly won the game 3 times in a row! I'm thinking we should sign her up for Mensa!
I don't really have anything super important to say...like I ever do. Here's a cute picture of Holly chillin' out on the couch before bedtime the other night. I don't remember what she was watching, but it must have been good.

Holly has decided that feeding Elmo a bottle is a very important task and she is spending a lot of time doing this. At first, she tried to feed him her milk, but I suggested a bottle instead. Shortly after, Elmo was having some technical difficulties, and I was afraid it was because he got too much milk, but it was only because his batteries were dying!

Holly says the funniest things sometimes. As we were sitting down to read books tonight before bed, I asked her "Who is cute?" She immediately said "I'm so cute!" Only someone like Holly can get away with that! We will have to deal with that when she gets a bit older so that she doesn't get a big head, though. No princesses are gonna live in this house!