Birthday Girl

On her birthday morning, playing with the balloons I put in her room.

(belated) Birthday  to my wonderful, sweet Britta. I am so grateful to be her mom. I am definitely not the most patient mother, but I am working on it. We have so much fun together and I love watching her learn and grow so much every day. She is such a happy, sweet girl and we can't imagine life without her.

The last post I did about Britta was six months ago. She has changed so much since then. She is super talkative. Just in the last two months or so, her vocabulary has exploded and I think other people besides me can now understand her also. She says things all the time that make me laugh and wonder "where did you learn that?" She sang the whole "Rock a bye Baby" song to herself in the car the other day. I think I have sung that to her like once, but ask her to sing "twinkle, twinkle little star" which she gets before every nap and she looks at you like you're crazy.

She counts to ten, but notoriously leaves out six and seven. She sings "A,B,C,W,Y,Z" as her ABCs--it's kind of adorable.

She's recently been on somewhat of a food strike. All she ever wants to eat is cereal--especially "raisy bran." I think she is subsisting off of cereal and milk alone.

She is OBSESSED with Dumbo. Chris found it on Netflix a month ago and put it on one night and now every day she asks me to watch "baby elephant." When I do put it on, she literally sits on the couch for the entire hour and doesn't even blink. It's amazing what you can get done in an hour, by the way.

She loves to play with Play-Doh. She asks me like ten times a day what I am doing and when I ask her back she always answers "playin play-doh" even when she isn't. When she does play with it, it entertains her forever but she makes a HUGE mess. I don't know how she gets it stuck to like every surface of her body and clothes, but she does.

She is off the binky except for sleeping times. I thought this would be a terrible transition but it was actually much easier than I expected. Plus, she loves to throw her binky back into her crib when I pick her up after her nap or in the morning. Sometimes when she gets really upset, she will ask for her binky and I tell her she has to go in her bed if she wants it. If she is really upset she will get in her crib and use it to calm down for a couple minutes and then call for me when she is ready to come out. It is actually awesome, like a calm down "time out" and then I save myself from getting angry (or angrier).

She is a terrible "mine" monster. I cannot tell you how much I hate this word, and the fact that it comes out of her mouth like fifty times a day. The concept of sharing is beyond lost on this child. Another child cannot even look at me with her saying "MY mommy." And that's just little old me, don't even get me started on her toys. Let's just say we're working on it.

Overall, she is so much fun. She loves her Daddy and her Grandma and Grandpa and cousins. She gets so excited when anyone she knows comes over, especially Grandpa. She loves to play hide and seek and have tickle fights with Dad. We couldn't ask for a sweeter girl. Plus, I think she's just about the cutest thing you ever saw. :)