Clearly her friends are twins. They have been coming over to our house for almost four years and I still can't tell them apart. M thinks they look nothing alike and I feel like the only thing different about them is, um, nothing. Oh wait! Their names are different. That's it. They all had a great time and I am so happy they got to go skiing.
The next day was M's birthday. I love that she still smells every present she gets. It makes this old lady's heart so happy! She loves smells and has her whole life. If there's a book on the counter, she'll pick it up and fan the pages as she gets really close to it so she can smell the ink. She says she loves the smell of Home Depot and has wished on occasion that her room could smell like that. 
Here are some of her birthday pictures.
I try so hard to be brave and keep a stiff upper lip, which is such a weird saying by the way, but when I think about how fast time goes and that I only get her for a few more years, I fall apart. M is such a sweet mild mannered person. She loves taking care of A and is so willing and happy to do it. It takes a lot to ruffle M's feathers and she's so content no matter what we're doing. She still loves to do back hand springs and is working on a back tuck. She loves to hang out with her friends and loves saving her money so she can buy clothes and shoes. She loves for her room to smell good and has plug in's and a scensty. But, sometimes those two things aren't enough and she sprays the air with her body sprays. She loves for A to smell good too and will spray her with smelly stuff and lather her in lotion any time A will let her. She has one of the best laughs in the world and we love when she laughs really hard.
This little thing turned 2 a few days after M had her birthday. I still have moments, a lot of them, when I think how crazy it is that she's here and part of our family. We are all totally enamored with her and are so so thankful that she came. She is feisty and isn't afraid to tell people when they are doing something she doesn't like or sitting somewhere she wants to sit. She likes to give hugs, sometimes and likes to make people laugh. She is learning to pray and loves when the older kids will help her. Usually once she's done praying she will run get her baby and say "baby prayer too?" She loves her babies, bear and stuffed dog. She loves her blanket and her hooded towel. Here is a picture of something else she loves, but only on Saturday mornings.
When I get her out of the bath, she insists on wearing her hat and once I give it to her, she puts it on and she takes off running around the house. I don't know what it is about Saturday's that make her want to be totally free but she's tiny enough that it's still cute. Until she pees on the floor right?! I don't let her run free for very long and once I catch her I have to wrestle her to get a diaper on her all the while she's screaming telling me that she doesn't want a diaper, she wants to run. Yeah, she's feisty.
Don't mind the head in the shot. Sheesh! She loved her new babies.
And her little kitchen. Although a few days after her birthday I heard her saying, "mommy! not working. Not working, mommy." I asked her what wasn't working and she said, "a mere" (come here). She took me downstairs where we put her kitchen and she went running over to it. There's a little button on the burner that when you put the pot on it, it will push on the button and make it sound like boiling water. I thought she was going to tell me that the sound had stopped working. Nope, she was trying to turn on the faucet and as she turned the little handle she would say "not working mommy." She likes it anyway and I'm eternally thankful that there's no running water in her little kitchen.
I don't know if she was more excited about the cookie or the candles.
Also, she loved the new babies she got, but she REALLY loves the binkies that came with the babies.
We have her birthday pictures but this computer is so annoying and I have no idea where the pictures are at. I labeled the file, A's birthday pictures, so I should be able to find them. No such luck. I'm sure this has nothing to do with operational error. Stupid computer. A is still tiny. She weighs 20 ponds as long as you weigh her after she's eaten. She doesn't like meat and won't eat it. She doesn't like leftovers, even if it's something she likes. The only exception is Mac and Cheese. She calls it pasta and will tell you almost every day that she wants pasta. She'll eat the leftovers of mac and cheese until the entire box is gone. She loves cereal, pancakes and fruit snacks. She loves potatoes and gravy but not baked potatoes. She LOVES chocolate but because of her peanut and tree nut allergies, she can't have a lot of it. However, she can have Dove plain chocolate and Cadbury eggs and will come running if you offer them to her. She loves suckers and applesauce. She likes yogurt as long as you let her feed herself which is fine unless she has a gogurt and squeezes it out every where and paints with it. Then it's just really annoying.
We truly love these two ladies that are ours and are thankful every day that they are stuck with us for eternity!
