Enjoying her Birthday!

I've posted some pictures from Wendy's birthday "week". We pretty much celebrated all week long!

The "cookies" picture is from her actual birthday and this is the look we get when she asks for cookies. =0)

The "crayons" picture explains Doug's story about her fascination regarding her crayons.

The "Elmo" picture is her birthday cake from the party we had on Saturday. It was a "cupcake" cake! It had 40 individual cupcakes (both chocolate and vanilla) with icing in between and all over. It was YUMMY! Thanks to my friend Jen for the idea and the picture!

The "singing" picture is pretty self explanatory. Wendy loves it when you sing to her! Thanks again to Jen for taking the picture.

Otherwise, she had a great 2nd birthday. She got all kinds of fun new toys from everyone and Grandma V. gave her a new summer wardrobe! Thanks to everyone for making it such a memorable birthday for us all. We get to celebrate all over again when we go visit Granny and Grandpa Schwartz over the holiday weekend!

Singing Happy Birthday! 

Elmo! 

Crayons! 

Cookies! 

Happy day to you!

Wendy has been celebrating a wonderful 2nd birthday month of June. She got an Elmo shirt (a red shirt with a big Elmo face on it), an Elmo Pez, some clothes, music and rhythm toys (tamborine, jingle bells, recorder, etc.), and more. One of her favorite toys is the Elmo from her cupcake cake (a cake made of cupcakes). Can you tell she likes Elmo?

She loved having everyone sing "Happy Birthday" to her. She sings it now to herself, "Happy day to you. Happy day to you, Wendy. Happy day to you..." (Repeat often).

I got to try out my early Father's Day grill on Saturday. We grilled too many hamburgers and hotdogs. I feel like the guy from Super Size Me.

Method to her madness

Who would have thought that one day I would be fascinated by watching my daughter unwrap paper from her crayons? This is Wendy's latest pasttime. She sneaks off to her crayons and peels the paper from crayons. Not just one or two, but over a dozen at a time. It captivates her attention for 20-30 minutes.

We've tried derailing her attention into doing something other than peeling crayon wrappers, but she keeps going back to her hobby. And, she generally picks up after herself, too. She knows to throw away the big wrappers and to put away her naked crayons.

I was watching her peel crayon wrappers last night, and realized a method to her obsession. She carefully chooses one crayon from the box; she will sort through them to find just the right one. She holds it like a microphone and uses her index finger to push down on the top of the crayon. If the crayon doesn't slide, she flips it around and tries the other side. If the crayon doesn't slide in the wrapper, she'll either discard it and find a new one. Or, if the wrapper is already torn, she'll peel a bit of the paper away and try pushing again. When she finds one crayon that slides easily in the wrapper, she'll push and rotate the crayon until she has enough of a grip on the crayon with one hand and a good grip of the wrapper in the other. She'll push, rotate, and pull until the crayon is wrapperless. Then, she disgards the disrobed crayon and finds the next one.

It's amazing why she finds this so fascinating, or even why I'm so captivated by watching her. Also, I think it's interesting that the naked crayons also no longer have names. They're just free and unnamed colors, the way nature likes them.

SHEEP? 

Wendy trying to put on her shoes! 

Baa?

We visited our friends Nancy and Matt during the Memorial Day weekend and had a great time! They have two minature poodles, Docker and Ellie. As soon as we walked into the door, Wendy ran up to the dogs, pointed and said "SHEEP"! We all had to laugh! I told her "no, honey those are dogs." She looked at me like I lost my mind and said "sheep...baa!". We just giggled and shrugged our shoulders. You really can't argue with her (see pictures above)...