Then she grew to two

WOW.  Another year has flown by and my baby Ashton is now a full fledged toddler.  She turned 2 last month on February 19.  Ashton has such a sweet spirit and has brought so much laughter and joy to our family.  We had a very, very low key celebration on her birthday.  Just a little party with the four of us after Geoff got home from work.  I didn't even take the time to make a cake and instead picked up one at the grocery store at the last minute.  

She sang Happy Birthday along with us when we sang to her  :)

Getting some help with the candles from big sis

Here's how she's doing developmentally:

Language:  This girl is a talker!  She chats all the time and mimics everything we say.  She says a lot of 3-4 word sentences: "Where Ilia (Olivia) at?"  "Please have grapes?" "Let's go, Mommy!"  "Watch this, Mommy!" "What you doing, Daddy?". She also loves to sing.  She can sing the complete ABC song as well as most of the words to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Jesus Loves Me and a handful of other songs.  She can verbally identify all the alphabet letters and can count to 10, skipping 6 along the way.  

Physical Development: She's starting to get to that stage of wanting to do everything herself.  Miss independent she is.  She still hasn't figured out how to crawl out of her crib and it's not even lowered all the way to the bottom rung! (Update: I wrote this sentence earlier this afternoon, before I observed her crawling out by herself for the first time.  I think I jinxed it! Maybe we will be lowering the crib this weekend.)  She has figured out how to climb in and she thinks it's the funnest thing. 

Sleeping: She is still a good sleeper although lately she has been turning her nose up at her afternoon nap. It doesn't help that she has a very small window to go down every afternoon before we have to go pick up Olivia from school and it our schedule doesn't allow me to get her down in that window, I won't even make any effort on the nap.  It's not worth the complete grump she is when I wake her up from a too short nap.  

Food:  Ashton is generally a good eater.  She has her moments of pickiness and isn't nearly the amazing eater that her sister is, but she holds her own.  She loves all fruit, especially berries, and would gladly eat a diet of 100% fruit if I let her.  

Playing:  She is amazing at playing by herself.  She often sits alone for long chunks of time playing with toys, building things with blocks or looking at books.  I'm not sure if it's just her personality, second child syndrome of not getting as much attention or a combination of both, but it works for me.  She also usually enjoys playing with Olivia and they can be really sweet together...until they both start fighting over the same toy or space which some days seems like it happens all days long.

Other:  Ashton loves to sleep with her blanket on top of her head.  Not covering her nose and mouth, but over her eyes and rest of her head.  It must make her feel cozy.  She feels a bit more trepidation going into new environments compared to Olivia at this age.  Olivia had no problems walking into someplace new and not looking back.  Ashton on the other hands tends to cling to me and cry for 30 seconds to a minute after I've left her before realizing that she's perfectly fine.