Happy Birthday Delia!

Right now, one of Delia's favorite things is cookies so we thought it was only fitting to have a Milk & Cookies themed birthday party. We invited all of her friends and decorated the house with brown and white polka dotted table clothes and pink plates, napkins and balloons. My friend Andrea did the invitations and I thought they were just beautiful--"Nothing is sweeter than Delia turning 2!"

Luckily the snow held off (the forecast kept changing that weekend), but it was freezing during her party. We're definitely going to have to research some fun indoor birthday party ideas for the future!

I bought Delia an adorable shirt (my new favorite discovery is Etsy!) and a purple tulle skirt for the party. She loved twirling around in it! Too bad she danced right out of it and spent the end of the party in her leggings :)

You can't see the skirt very well in this picture but you can see how excited Delia was for her party!

Here's a much better picture of the skirt

All smiles!

We baked a TON of cookies for the day! A huge THANK YOU to MaMa for baking all of the pumpkin cookies! John made his (in)famous sugar cookies with hot pink sprinkles and I made chocolate chip cookies.

Even after sending cookies home with the kids as part of their favor, we still had lots of leftovers. Good thing they were so yummy!

I got creative and slightly crafty for the party favors. I made cookie pops--sugar cookies with mini M&Ms on a stick. They were wrapped in plastic and tied with ribbon (pink or brown with pink polka dots).

John helped with the tags. They say "Thank you for making Delia's birthday so sweet"

We set up a bounce house in the garage so the kids could burn off some of their energy. We also had cookie decorating and even a dance party!

Delia had so much fun bouncing with Macey. John had to pry them out of the bounce house! He got a lot of video footage of the day, especially the bouncing and dancing.

All the kids had so much fun decorating cookies!

Delia loved decorating her cookie! She put all of her candy in a big pile of the cookie--no time spent making it pretty!

My friend Marci made Delia's cake and she did a fabulous job! I found some ideas online and she did a great job of incorporating all of them. Delia loved that there were real cookies on her cake.

Delia has been practicing blowing out her candles for a year now. Last year, she got a toy cake that lets you blow out the candles. Evidently her hard work paid off because she blew them out on the first try! She was so proud of herself too; it was precious!

Delia was so ready to blow out her candles!

Success!

Here some more adorable pictures from the day:

Mommy and Daddy with the Birthday Girl

John Grayson and his best friend, Jack (who Delia has a crush on!)

Kisses for Daddy

A somewhat successful family picture

Delia also had two smaller birthday celebrations. We had a playgroup party because three of the kids have January birthdays and then we had a family celebration on her actual birthday.

JGray was so excited for Delia's birthday! Almost more excited than she was probably because he's old enough to remember that birthdays mean cake and presents. He was the best big brother all week. He didn't get jealous when she got to open presents or when she got most of the attention. He was just genuinely happy for her to celebrate her birthday. He is the best big brother!

Silly faces before birthday cake

Celebrating January birthdays at playgroup

And finally, the obligatory Schmitt family birthday video :)

Two Years Old!!

Wow, it's so hard to believe that Delia is 2 years old! I feel like it was just yesterday that we brought our sweet baby girl home from the hospital. I was so worried about being able to balance two kids, so worried about how John Grayson would adjust to having a baby sister, so worried about being a good mom to two kids. Now I can't imagine life without her. Yes, there is a lot more noise and a lot more mess, but there is also a lot more laughter and a lot more joy. Delia has blossomed into a fiesty, sassy, happy, silly little girl. She amazes us with her personality and fearlessness.

At 2 years old, Delia:

• Weighs 26lb 12oz (50th percentile) and is 34.75 inches long (75th percentile). I'm actually surprised she put on weight between her 18 month and 2 year check ups because she is an incredibly picky eater. We hear the word "gucky" (yucky) daily. I'm still surprised she can go without eating more than grapes for dinner.
• Finally has all of her teeth, except for her two year molars. As long as it took Delia to get her teeth, she'll probably be John Grayson's age before she gets those molars!
• Loves to run, jump, climb, flip, and hang. She'll say, "I'm runnin' " and then start jogging around the furniture. She's been taking a class at The Little Gym since the fall and she absolutely loves it. Her favorite things are hanging and flipping on the bars, walking on the balance beam, and doing rolls on the big red mat.
• Has a great sense of humor. Delia is a very silly little girl. She loves to laugh and be tickled. She does funny things and if you don't laugh, then she'll do it again until you react the appropriate way. She actually goes over to John and asks him to tickle her. She pulls up her shirt, shows him her tummy and says "eat" because he kisses and tickles it simultaneously.
• Is a little trouble maker. Delia is definitely starting to test her limits. You tell her not to do something and then she'll look at you with a mischievous twinkle in her eye and do it again. It's so hard not to laugh at her because she's so cute. This could be a big problem when she's a teenager.
• Loves to sing. Delia loves to sing her ABCs. She knows most of the letters and will mumble the ones she doesn't know until she gets to one that she does know. She knows bits and pieces of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Silent Night." She also know parts to almost all the songs in our kids' CDs in the car. She'll sing what she knows (usually very loudly) and then hum along to the rest.
• Loves to dance. She is an active and quite willing participant in the nightly Schmitt family dance parties. She loves to spin around until she falls down, but jumps right back up. She also loves to shake her bottom. If you ask her to shake it, then she giggles and shakes her butt. She loves the attention.
• Talks, a lot. Within the last two months, her vocabulary has grown tremendously! We always knew she understood what we were saying to her, but it took a little while for the spoken words to catch up. It probably doesn't help that JGray talks a lot himself. Delia has started talking in 2 and 3 word sentences. She also does a lot of babbling and we understand a lot of what she's saying; not everything but definitely quite a bit. She has names for her baby doll ("Baby") and bear ("Sleepy"). Her favorite words are "pizza", "cookie", "juice", "runnin", "outside", "jumpin", "Luv you", "kisses", "hugs", "please", "thank you." She loves to blow kisses when she's saying goodbye ("mmmmuh, mmmmuh, mmmmuh"). She knows all of her body parts and animal sounds too.
• Loves her brother most of all. She calls him "Bobby". Why? When she was a baby, I always referred to him as "big brother" or just "brother." When she first started talking, she called him "Ba Ba." Well, that has evolved into "Bobby." She yells it, so it's more like, "BOBBY!!!!!!" Best of all, he responds to it. She can holler his name and he'll say, "Yes, Delia?!" Part of me hopes that she'll keep this nickname forever because it is just too cute. It melts my heart to know that my kids adore each other. He is definitely her best friend, although she does have a crush on JGray's friend Jack :-)
• Loves to play. She doesn't have a favorite thing like JGray did at this age (trains and trucks), but she has lots of toys she enjoys. Baby dolls and strollers, a tea set, coloring with crayons and markers, stuffed animals, legos, Little People, kitchen, dress up. She's not obsessed with princesses (although she does like to say the word "princess"). I think having a big brother helps keep her open to playing with balls, trucks, trains and dinosaurs. She can throw a ball and even catch it too. She also kicks really hard!
• Loves books. She will grab a book and give it to the nearest adult, saying "Read!" (We're still working on the please and thank you part. Most of the time, she does say it, which makes Mommy very proud.)
• Has shown a serious interest in the potty. A few weeks ago I thought that she was going to commit fully to the potty. She refused to wear clothes and ran around naked. BUT she peed (and pooped!) on the potty! She loved getting candy and the potty song too! Then I think she realized that this whole potty training thing isn't all it was cracked up to be. Since she's still young, I decided not to push things. John is out of town in March, so I think I'm going to lock us in the house and climb on board the potty train!
• Our most recent challenge has involved her hair. Her beautiful hair with gentle curls at the end. We started noticing hair in her crib. Not a huge deal but the clumps of hair got bigger. And there were more of them. A lot more. So much so that her hair actually started looking a little thin on top. (I'm sure I was just more conscious of it because I put bows in her hair everyday, but to me it was getting bad.) We finally discovered that she was using her pacifier to rip the hair out of her head (yes, she still has a pacifier. Please forgive me. I promise it will be disappearing soon!). She was playing with the pacifier, eventually wrapping her hair around it. And then she was yanking it out, hair included! Long story short, she now only has one pacifier in the crib, and her hair is growing back nicely. Yes, the Paci Fairy is coming soon to the Schmitt house :-)
  

Delia, you've gone from this.....

To this....

in 2 short years. What a joy! We love you, sweet girl!

Updates Coming Soon

Yes, I know it's been a month since I updated the blog. We've been very busy with lots of wonderful activities. I promise to work hard this week to get things current!!