2 Years! - UPDATED with stats

Our precious, sweet girl is 2 years old today. Where has the time gone? She has changed so much in the past year. We love her to pieces and are so proud of the little lady she is becoming.  I have spent the last few weeks working on this post so I could try to capture all that is she doing right now so we can remember! I also put together a little video of her 2nd year, which is at the bottom of the post. It's 9ish minutes long, so more power to you if you're willing to sit through it...we mostly just did it for us and our family, but figured we'd share it here too. I was going to add a bunch of photos to this post but they are all pretty much covered in the video...

At 2 years Laila...

Can sing numerous songs to completion on her own. Some examples are:
Zaccheaus song

ABCs
Trust and Obey
Mary had a Little Lamb
Twinkle Twinkle
C'mon Vamanos (from Dora)
...and others...

Favorite phrase right now: "hmm, let's think about it..." or "how 'bout..." when I ask her what she wants to eat, or what she wants to do.

She says our prayer before meals. "Dear Jesus, thank you for our food. Amen."

At night we ask her who she wants to pray for, and the answer is always "mommy, daddy, juju, babies (her blankie), blaire and elise (two of her friends)"

Then we tell her to have sweet dreams and ask her what she's going to dream about. Her answer is always "m&m's, puppy dogs, sprinkle donuts and popsicles"

words she can't say= volcano comes out "patano", vacation is "patation"

When we ask her what her full name is she says "Laila Courtney Vatafa".  She is getting much better at saying Laila now and actually pronouncing the L's instead of it coming out "Yay-ya". She knows Juliet's full name too. She also knows her birthday is August 13th.

She knows we live in Ladera Ranch, California and that Nana, DeeDee and Grandy live in Massachusetts.

We changed the words to the Bingo song and sing, "there was a mom who had two girls and Laila and Juliet were there names..." and then Laila spells L-A-I-L-A and J-U-L-I-E-T.

She knows most colors and numbers in Spanish as well as words like:
vamanos (let's go)
abrazo (hug)
beso (kiss)
te quiero (i love you)
adios amigos (bye friends)
estrella (star)
abuela (grandma)
perrito (puppy)

When Collin asks her to do something, he taught her to respond "comprendo, dada"

She often asks how to say words in Spanish thanks to Dora. "Mama, Mama, xx in Spanish?"

She knows how to count to ten consistently and inconsistently to twenty.  She does not really get the process of actually counting things though (any more than 3).  We have counting books and we will ask her how many of something there is (there will be 4), and she will just count up to a random number she feels like counting to.

She knows her Patriots roster: Tom Brady is the quarterback, "Gronk" is the tight end, and Welker is the wide receiver :)

She's not into Elmo as much but more into Dora and Bubble Guppies (she has definitely gotten to watch more TV since JuJu came along, but it's still used as sparingly as possible). We can use Dora characters as enticement to eat. We'll say, "what kind of bite do you want?" and she will respond with the name of a Dora character, i.e. "A Dora bite!" or "A Boots bite!" or Tico, Benny or Isa.  There is nothing special about what we do, other than call the bite by name. Whatever works to get your kid to eat, I guess!

She can sit and pay attention to much longer books now and asks you to read them over and over! One of her current favorite books is Sesame Street's The Case of the Missing Duckie, which was one of Collin's favorite books as a kid too. She fills in the words to most books we read. It usually only takes reading a book a few times before she can at least fill in the last word of each sentence, and then it gets to be phrases and sentences the more often we read them. She has a good memory I guess.

She can play on her own in the playroom for quite some time when she's in the mood. She is really developing a great imagination. She changes, burps and feeds her dollies, checks their temperature and puts them down for naps, she will make me cookies/cupcakes and tea in her kitchen, and loves getting dressed up in her tutus with headbands and jewelry.

She loves the pool and will stand on the stairs and put her face in or duck under for a few seconds at a time own her own, she jumps right in and asks to go under and spin with dada. She LOVES going to parks, which we do on an almost daily basis. There are a million parks here in Ladera and we often have play dates at parks and love exploring new ones. There are still so many we haven't even been to yet. She is getting more confident on a big kid swing, she can climb up and down slides with ease and is getting really good at climbing rope ladders and trickier step things.

She is a little negotiator. She is often heard saying "just one sip" of something she can't have (iced tea, soda, etc), or saying "last time" or "last book" or "just one more..." It's never a question, always a bargaining statement. We think it's pretty funny.

She likes to match and always tells me what color bow to put in her hair once she is dressed for the day. She will look at her shirt, pick a color or colors out of it and then tell me what color she wants. Thankfully she doesn't have much opinion on what she wears yet but she does have more of an opinion on what shoes she wears and she likes to put them on and take them off herself.

She can still wear certain 12-18 month clothes (like leggings), but mostly wears 18-24 month and 2T.  She wears 2T and 3T sleepers.  Some 18-24 month skirts and pants are still too big in the waist. I am in love with the pants and shorts that have the elastic and the buttons inside so you can cinch the waist. Works wonders for Laila! She is in size 5 diapers and size 6 shoes.

She is starting to be aware of when she goes potty. She will tell me she is pooping and then ask me to change her immediately.  Sometimes she even brings me a diaper. A few times I have caught her trying to take her diaper off herself and thankfully intercepted before we had a real mess on our hands! I am in no rush to potty train her, but I'm sure we'll be at that point sooner than later due to her increasing awareness. She has continued to go on the potty a few times here and there, but mostly it's just luck I think.

 STATS:

27.8 lbs (50%)

38 inches (>95%)