Our 2 Year Old!

2 year-old life started off a bit rough for Leah.

She was already awake, but everybody running in, turning on the lights, and singing "happy birthday", was a apparently a bit too much excitement to be greeted with first thing in the morning. I get it, Leah. I had those overly chipper BYU roommates myself. Pretty sure I pretended to fall back asleep too.

 Leah still crying and Everett freshly poked in the eye. Somehow the best we could get.

The sadness was temporary. Running through her birthday balloons, a Wendy's frosty, and time alone at the park with Mommy seemed to brighten up her day just perfectly.

Last year I majorly cut back and only did a cupcake for Leah. Really, just a cupcake. No party. I thought that simplifying would make me happy, but guess what? I hated it. Turns out that I quite enjoy doing fun, creative-birthday things for my kids even at the sacrifice of some of my sanity (and possibly Tom's). I was determined this year that I wanted to do more for her, but realized that we had no good weekend or weeknight to do a big shindig with friends. Plus, we realized we have no friends (only kind of kidding).

Realizing I was sad about this, Tom and I came up with a compromise. I could still do a theme and make it cutesy, but it would be just us. Just our little family of 6 on her birthday. And that turned out being perfectly awesome. Not too much work, and just a slight touch of over the topness to appease me.

Fashion was the theme. This girl is a little more than obsessed with picking out her clothes and REALLY loves dresses and skirts. It can often turn into a full on brawl to get her to wear anything that matches or pants. Unless it's Sunday, then of course she wants to wear pants. So a FASHION PARTY really seemed to be a perfect fit for our little fashionista...

We even included a fashion show where the kids put on accesories behind the curtain and walked out all fancied up. By this point, my parents joined the party via Skype and Leah was completely mesmorized with staring at and talking to them. The other kids got pretty into it though.

Leah finally broke away from skypeing when she got her new doll stroller, and wouldn't let it out of her sight. She'd get mad if anyone (Claire) would touch it and even slept with it in her room that night.

 How beyond happy we are that we've been loving this fun, spunky, hilarious, sweet thing for 2 whole years now!

 Happy birthday, my favorite 2 year old!!!!