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.