Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Dearest Lyla,

I cannot believe that yesterday we celebrated your 2nd birthday! These two years have just flown by. When you woke up yesterday we walked down to Meloglaze and you picked out a sprinkled donut for breakfast. It was the perfect morning for a walk...45 degrees on January 24th in Minnesota, is so rare!! We walked down together and you liked to say, "Follow, follow, follow," as you followed me walking down the sidewalk. Later in the day you had some of your favorite people at your party. Auntie KK drove up from Winona, Ellen and Tyler came over, and your bestie Mila came too, of course! It was so fun watching you and Mila play together. GaGa wasn't able to come, but you FaceTimed with her for awhile, like you do most days. 

You've been obsessed with your Little People Farm and School Bus that you got for Christmas. For your birthday Daddy and I got you some more accessories for your farm. You have been going to Maple Tree Day School in South Saint Paul this year and you absolutely love it! Your teachers are Ree and Jackie. You spend your days playing with your friends Mia, Landon, Wyatt, Adrian, Caden, Tommy, and Miles (he's the sassy one). You've done a lot of art projects (which you LOVE), played outside a lot, sang lots of songs, had a Christmas concert (you got stage fright and didn't dance even though you knew the whole thing!!), and enjoyed your time on the "Tumble Bus" that comes to your school every other week. I was very nervous about you being in more of a daycare/school setting after having a nanny last school year, so I've been so happy with how things have gone this year. (Many days you don't want to leave!)

Any day now, your little brother is going to arrive. We've been prepping you for this event for months now. We've talked about your baby brother, encouraged you to carry your baby doll around, and now recently, we've set up his crib, since you will be sharing a room. For the last two weeks you have been saying that you want baby Levi to come to your birthday party, so I think you are getting excited for him to come. I know you're going to be a wonderful big sister, because you are such a good little girl. You're so nice and happy all of the time. It's hard for me to imagine life not being all about you, but I'm excited for you to experience the joys of having a sibling. I'm also looking forward to spending a year and a half at home with you and Levi. The best part of having a brother is that you will still get to be my, "favorite little girl in the whole wide world."

Right now you are able to:
* Identify all of your letters and say some words that start with most of them ("M" Mommy, "D" Daddy, "G" Goldy & GaGa, "L" Lyla...etc.)
* Sing the ABC's
* Speak in sentences (You are a talker!)
* Identify all of your colors

Things we love about you:
* The way you say, "What happened?!?!" all of the time
* The way you randomly hug me (Mommy) and say, "Best friends!"
* The way you sing songs in your crib before you fall asleep or when you wake up. ("Let it Go" from Frozen, "Wheels on the Bus", "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star")
* The way you yelled, "I want Jenny!!!!" in the middle of the night after asking Daddy for "Mommy" multiple times and me not going into your room. (You sometimes call Daddy Andy too.)
* The way you lick the jam off of your toast and then two minutes later tell me, "I want some more jelly on there!" of course, without eating any of the bread!
* The way you constantly tell us, "Monkey has dots." You especially like to say this when you wake up in the morning
* The way you get so excited when we see a school bus or city bus driving home from school
* The way you describe some of the other kids at school as, "sassy" or tell other kids when they are being sassy!
* How OCD you are about certain things (For instance bedtime routine: First you have to throw monkey over the edge of your crib, then we throw you over the edge, then you need to take a drink from the black water bottle you keep in your crib, then from the purple one that is also in there, then we put your Nuk in, then you lie down and we cover you---don't mess with the routine!!)
* The way you chase GaGa's dog and say, "I want my hugs Lily!" ("I want my hugs has turned into a commonly used phrase now in our family.)
* How you sing the Minnesota rouser, really fast and kind of mumbled
* The way you say, "I want to see pictures of Lyla!" (On the iPhone---you say this all the time---sometimes as Daddy once said, "even in the middle of a crisis" which was you, puking all over in the middle of the night!)

You are such a wonderful little girl, who has brought us so much joy in the last two years. January 24th, 2013 was the best day ever, the day you joined us and made we became a family. With that in mind...

Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Lyla, Happy birthday to you!

We love you forever,

Mommy & Daddy