My Pregnancy Journal: Kalia is TWO!!!

I can't believe Kalia is already two. It does not seem like two years ago that we welcomed this little miracle child, stubborn in her own right from the get go, full of life, love, and an amazing amount of happiness...all more than we ever thought possible, into our lives. She has taught us how to love more deeply, how to hold on tighter, how to appreciate the tiny miraculous things in life, such as the moon, or how beautiful the trees look blowing in the wind when you lay underneath them. She is full of giggles, all out roaring laughters, and makes me so proud every single day. Even the ones that are hard are worth it for the love I feel for this little tyrant of ours :-).

Dear Kalia,

When you look back on this someday, you'll wonder how you were...how we were...how we all were together and want to know things about your childhood that helped make you the wonderful woman I know you will someday become. Well, if you're anything like me you will. :-) I started this blog as a way to keep everyone up to date with us while I was carrying you. I kept it going as a momento to you, and to your Daddy and I, hoping that we'd one day look back at this together with smiles, love, and laughter. Somewhere along the way it became what it initially was started for as well - a way to keep all of our family and friends up to date with how we're doing and what you're up to. Over these past two years you have amazed me more than I could possibly even begin to explain. You were stubborn from the get-go, but that is something you most definitely come by honestly. The very first day you entered this world, the way you held up your head and looked at everyone with those giant, beautiful eyes of yours, had me in awe of you. I was so so worried before you came that I wouldn't be a good Mother to you...that I'd miss the connection or the bond or screw it up somehow. I'm positive that I will mess up a lot of things throughout the years, but the one thing I know I will not is my love for you. I will never stop loving you with every fiber of my being...you will never stop meaning the world to me...and I will forever be grateful that you are my daughter. I will forever love you as much as it is humanly possible to love another person. That much I am sure.

You have tested your Daddy and I as parents...with the colic to start off with, then the refusal to take a bottle, and your stubbornness and unwillingness to nap or go to bed a lot of nights has had us besides ourselves with worry and even at times anger. But never because we don't love you...moreso because we want to do as much right by you as possible, and we know we're only human, and we don't have all the answers.

What you have taught me over these past two years is that that's okay. As long as you have our love, the rest will work itself out. You've taught me to take deep breaths and take pleasure in the simple things in life.

Right now you love to run, you love to be active all of the time. The times when you're not running around, you want to sing, play with play-doh, read stories, play with your dolls, and cook pretend food for me to eat. You love to help with anything and everything - the laundry, feeding Kodi, putting the dishes away, cooking, cleaning, you name it...you want to be apart of it. It makes the mundane tasks a lot more fun!

You laugh so much, and so hard. You have such a buoyancy about yourself, about life. You live every single day to it's fullest and don't let one single minute go to waste. You are never bored. I don't even remember what it was like to be bored. I think it's just something other people talk about. We don't allow you to watch TV yet, with the exception of college football (hey, I said we're human!), and you still have something to do for yourself every single minute of the day. At times it's wearing, it's almost always exhausting, but it is also always fun and entertaining. You push me to be creative, to test my limits, to see extraordinary in the ordinary, to see life in things I thought were obsolete. To see the pure joy in splashing, jumping, singing, laughing, blowing bubbles, and running. Not just to experience the action of it, but the emotion that goes along with it. You are full of emotions, and are constantly expressing them.

For the most part you're happy. You are two though, and you do question things a lot and test the boundaries to see how far you can push. I honestly hope that stays with you forever. I hope you always test the limits of what's possible, and I hope you continue to question everything and take nothing as is, and take nothing for granted. Those might be tiring lessons with a two year old, but they're faucets of life that will serve you well down the road.

You're only two, yet I already know that you are going to grow up to be the most amazing, wonderful woman someday. You are so so so incredibly smart, you pick up everything, and you say things that a two year old shouldn't understand yet, but you do.

You have a gift with your beautiful smile and eyes. Your smile spreads all the way from your lips to your adorable dimples in your cheek, all the way up to your eyes. I didn't know that eyes smiled, but yours do. You are such a happy little girl, and I just love you so so so very much. Always.

Now, slow down just a little bit. Somehow I blinked and you went from a newborn with incredible strength to the most amazing, intense, adorable, and funny two year old. I don't want to be writing your three year old post tomorrow. So slow down...

With all my heart, now and forever,

Mommy

I think I tried to make up for the fact that Kalia couldn't have any of her little friends over for a birthday party by completely over-whelming the poor girl on her actual birthday. She did really well with everything, but the day was definitely jam packed!

Kalia's Granny was in town helping us move, which was such a special treat for Kalia's birthday!

We put balloons and most of Kalia's gifts in the upstairs playroom so that she saw them as soon as she came out of her bedroom in the morning. She was very excited about her "Happy Birthday Balloons!!" It took us a few to coax her to open up some of her presents!

"Woah, the balloons go so high!!"

"Um, Daddy...it's my birthday. I don't have to smile for the camera if I don't want to! I'm busy!!"

I made her one of her favorite breakfasts, blueberry and banana muffins, and put them in Elmo cupcake liners and stuck the toppers in. She told us she wanted to eat Oscar, Mommy eat Abby Cadabby, Daddy eat Cookie Monster, and Granny eat Elmo. Girl knows what she wants!

After breakfast it was time for us to give her our big gift - a trampoline!! Reese has one just like it, and at first Kalia said "Reese's trampoline? Reese's??" and after we finally convinced her that it was hers, she kept saying "I got my OWN jump!! This is Kalia's OWN jump jump!!" She went a little crazy on it. She absolutely LOVES the thing!!!

This next one just captures who she is to me...fun, full of life, and buoyant :-).

After she jumped around for a little bit, we drug her off of there to head down to our community beach pool which is a mile away. We took her up there the night before to get our resident cards, but this was the first time she was actually allowed to swim swim in it. Between the trampoline and the beach pool, she was in heaven.

After the beach pool, she went home and passed out (literally, Chris didn't even make it through the bedtime routine and she was out!). When she woke up, we headed down to the Dallas Zoo. It's a bit of a drive, so she's been zoo deprived since we've been here. We also brought along the rest of her birthday presents (she got too overwhelmed in the morning - she wanted to play with everything, not keep opening!) and multi-tasked on the drive into Dallas.

Amy, Reese, and Greg sent her this singing birthday card along with her gift that you have to blow out the candles too. I think she played that thing 100 times!

The theme of the car ride to the zoo was "OPEN!!!!" She wanted to play with every toy she got still!

Yay for books that she could read in the car (thanks Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Taggart!).

"yay Pookie, that was a good book!"

And the zoo!

She is kind of obsessed with fish tanks, big or small, right now. She will stare at those things for hours. We have a Kodi though, that's enough pets for us!