Our Canadian Cuties: December 2010

For Cora's Birthday blog, I feel as though it is necessary that I start with a dialogue between Cora and Lee from Christmas Eve rather than her birthday.

We're sitting at the dinner table eating baked salmon and green beans. Lee and I are done eating, but Cora is busy going to town on her third helping.

Lee: My goodness Cora. Are you our Omega-3 baby?

Cora: (stern look {see photo for example}) I two!!!!

Lee: (laughing very hard) Oh sorry. You are two, not Omega-3.

Up until that point, we didn't think Cora really understood that her birthday celebration was actually because she was a year older. Turns out we were very wrong. Every time we correct her now, she looks at us and says, "I two!". OK, guess she is old enough to do everything by herself. Turns out it was a good time to start potty training with her attitude, but that's another post.

Daycare started her birthday celebrations. Every two year old girl going to her own birthday party would need to have something special. This year, Cora got to use sponge rollers for the first time. She seemed to like them. I was surprised.

I thought it would be best to take her couch photos before heading to daycare. Cora was not impressed. I couldn't get her to crack a smile for anything.

Cora's milestones:

She is currently cutting her two year molars. These are the worse. The always has 8 fingers shoved deep into her mouth. She's sleeping with Lee and I nearly every night because she wakes up crying from the pain. I hate teething. I hate seeing her in pain.
She is talking like a champ (for a 2 year old). She is starting to use sentences on a very elementary level. She especially likes to use "I need ___" and "I want ___".

She is doing reasonably well with her manners. More often than not she says please.
She can bounce around like a bunny rabbit (multiple hops in a row).
Her coordination is really coming along. We play very basic hand clap games with her.
She loves dancing and really loves mimicking my crazy moves.
She tries to boss Reggie around constantly. "Reg, SIT!" "Reg, COME!" "Here Boy!" "Shhhh" "Stop barking!" You get the picture. Reggie, on the other hand, doesn't pay her a lick of attention. Well, unless she is using a cookie as bribery.
She absolutely loves Beauty and the Beast. She could watch the movie and read the books we have over and over and over and never get tired of them.

Cora's birthday ended up being a great day for all three of us. We took her to an 11:30am showing of Yogi Bear in 3-D. We had taken her to Rapunzel a few weeks before for my birthday, so she knew the ropes of a movie theater. She had not been to movie in 3-D though. Lee and I weren't sure if it was going to be overwhelming for her, but she did great. The movie was a bit dry, but the experience was a lot of fun. She wore her 3-D glasses for the previews and promptly took them off for the movie and refused to put them back on. Of course, she wanted to wear them home in the car seat.

We got Cora home just in time for a nap. While she was napping, Lee was busy setting up her new play tent. He bought this for her over a month ago and has been dying to give it to her. Somehow, I got him to wait until her birthday. Her eyes about bugged out of her head when she saw the tent. Lee had bought Mya and Max the same tent when we went to Arizona. She loved playing in it there. I can't hardly imagine what was going through her head when she saw that she was now the proud owner of the same tent. She immediately jumped inside and started rolling the tent all around the room. Imagine a gerbil inside and exercise ball.

We had chicken piccatta and roasted red peppers for dinner. More importantly for a birthday, we had Toffee Blondies with candles for desert. It was quite cute seeing her try to blow out candles. Dinner and dessert was followed by more presents. She got all kinds of fun girly things from a horse coat to a new dolly to a purse and much more. What a lucky little two year old. I am sure she went to bed that night thinking about how much fun she was going to have playing with all her new toys. Little did she know Santa was going to be stopping by the next night. ;)