Hadley the Two Year Old

And then the baby one turned two. TWO. She's two already and loving every minute of it. Hadley highlights commence (and sorry, baby, when you read this a month late when you're big. once you move an entire family/household across the Midwest in two phases months apart, you'll understand).

• Our little talker - she's now using 2-3 word sentences that are getting longer every day. It's nice that she's really caught up on her language now - we understand her more, she's frustrated less, and we all laugh at the hilarious things she comes up with.
• Our little stinker - she's still up to no good often and loves to be the sassy one. She's the one we'll find egging Morgan on until she "pops"...but she's a good egg, too, and isn't fully sassy, if I do say so myself. Adam may disagree sometimes. ;-)
• She likes:
• babies. toy and real.
• her baby cousin, Calvin. She will kiss him no less than 1,239 times in 10 minutes if allowed to do so while leaning on his tiny baby tummy (if unsupervised).
• her big sis. No wait - she LOVES her big sis. They play together all the time and Hadley will do almost anything Morgan tells her to (at this point - another short-lived gem, I'm sure).
• the McDonald's play land, especially the one by our new house with the giant slide she and Morgan go down together (and even alone sometimes! big girl!)
• SLEDDING. We have a GINORMOUS sledding hill a few blocks from our house. this kid is afraid of nothing and as soon as the tube stops (with the parent sitting under her), she jumps off and waddles her padded self directly straight back up that mountain.
• her Grandpa Al. It must be a second-born bond or something. They are in cahoots at all times. Got an owie? If Grandpa Al is there, mom/dad might as well not exist.
• tickles. she'll tell you she doesn't want tickles but she's lying and actually means she wants more.
• to eat. She eats fairly well and if it's a soup she loves, she'll devour it and beg for more. Favorite foods include mac 'n cheese and hotdogs, my chicken noodle soup, white cheese shells, kilbasa (love it when she says this - BASAAAA), popcorn, clementines...she's a good eater.
• Her stats at her 2 year well check were great! She was 26.4lbs (50s for percentile?...can't remember) and 35" tall (80th percentile!! Woah growth!). She's still easily fitting in 2T clothes so it will be interesting this summer, unless she has another growth spurt, of what she's going to wear...Morgan was in 3T during her 2 y/o summer so we might have to revert back to last year's 2T clothes that were big on her.
• She has discovered the word "no" loudly and clearly but will usually be talked into what we need her to do eventually. She has a mind all her own and a free spirit who knows exactly what she wants.
• Hadley loves to dance. She dances anywhere to any music. She also quickly catches on to lyrics of a song and was singing one in the car this morning I didn't realize she had learned. She's also singing one about a bus and very clearly knows what she's singing even though the rest of us have no clue other than this "song" is triggered any time we talk about/see a school bus.
• She's been having a hard time going down on the first try the past week or so. She stands and yells MOM! DAD! (like that - like a big kid) and then won't tell us what she wants. We're trying to go super nanny on her and just lay her back down, cover her up, and leave. I hate that. I would rather snuggle her but then I'd be in her room until 9pm and that's not cool.
• Old news, but she's totally potty trained during awake hours. She's dry about 1/3 of the time she wakes up from naps, depending on how long they are. She's getting "driER" overnight, but we're a ways off from that and that's totally ok with me.
• We kept her in her crib for the moves and in a few weeks, we'll transition her to a toddler bed although something tells me this independent little girl with a mind of her own will not make this as easy of a transition as her older sister did for us... ;-)

Our little Hadley keeps us busy and entertained for sure. She snuggles us and makes so many people smile. We love her like crazy and are excited about the big kid she's growing into. Happy 2 years old, Hadley Elizabeth!