Malia 2.0

Today is Malia’s second birthday. To commemorate this grand occasion, here are a few tidbits about Malia:

Her favorite book is “The Foot Book.” We have read it about fifty-billion times. But it is one of those books that I don’t mind reading fifty-billion times. It is Dr. Seuss after all.

Her favorite movie is “Tangowed” because it has a “pincess” named “Punzeled.” I’ve shown her Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and she was…underwhelmed. In fact, she told me, “Tangowed better.”

She talks, and talks, and talks. She is using three and four words in sentences and the sentences are plentiful. She is getting pretty good and telling us what she wants, which is helpful because…

…she can throw a mighty temper tantrum when she wants to. She will lay down on the floor and cry and cry and scream and cry some more. We just ignore her and after a while she decides she is done, gets up, and moves on.

She loves to be outside.

She has discovered that the library has lots of books that she can bring home with her. And she’s happy about it.

She has a thing for shoes. A couple of months ago I took her to Payless to get some new Sunday shoes. She got really excited and walked down the aisles pointing at all the shoes and saying, “Cute! Cute! Cute!” She is definitely my child.

She really likes bows. Whether in her hair or on her clothes, she really, really likes bows. She’s very girly.

She is a pretty picky eater. She is mostly picky where vegetables and meat is concerned. She’ll eat hot dogs, chicken nuggets and the occasion slice of lunch meat, but any other meat is a challenge. As far as veggies are concerned, she loves cucumbers, fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob. Other than that, veggie eating is pretty sparse. But she eats fruit of all kinds and she eats cheese and yogurt in plentiful amounts so I figure she is probably getting most of what she needs anyway. She is also picky about random things like macaroni. She won’t eat mac and cheese and she won’t eat the orange and green pasta in the tricolored rotini but she loves plain macaroni and spaghetti. In the junk food arena she is a fan of pizza, fries, mellows (marshmallows) and chocolate. And, like me, she just can’t resist a good cookie.

She sings during sacrament meeting, loudly. She has to have a hymn book and she only sings when everyone else does.At home she sings whenever she wants. Favorite songs include Old MacDonald, Popcorn Popping, I Love to See the Temple, I Am a Child of God, and the Itsy-bitsy Spider. And lately she has been singing, “Birthday to me, birthday to me…”

She can count to five or six although she doesn’t know what it means yet. Her favorite number is 13. When I try to get her to count lately, she’ll fill in whatever blank with “tirteen.”

She loves nursery. It took her a couple of months to decide it was okay, but now she is all about the toys and the snacks and the friends. During sacrament meeting when she starts to feel like she has been there long enough (usually right after the sacrament), she will look up at us and say, “Nursery time!” She feels it keenly when she misses nursery. When she had a cold a couple of weeks ago and had to stay home, she cried and cried because she wanted to go to nursery. When Kevin and Daniel came home after church, she ran and got her church shoes because she thought that meant it was time to go. Then she cried some more: “Nursery! (sob, sob) Nursery!”

She has been sleeping in her big girl bed at night for a week now which is really great considering she has been sick for about half that time. She still wants to sleep in the crib for her naps, but we’re making progress.

For some reason she thinks it is super fun to hang out in my shower. This morning she made herself comfy and read a book while I was getting dressed.

This evening we had a quiet celebration at home. Malia was having a grumpy evening and when it was time to blow out the candles she said, “Matthew do it.” She ate the marshmallow flower and the gum drop off the cupcake and left the rest. While she was eating, her nursery teacher came by and brought her some cookies so she had one of those as well.

She was reluctant to open presents until she got the first one open and discovered a tiny princess doll from Daniel. Then she was all smiles.

Matthew got her a princess iPhone. Nathan gave her crayons and a pencil. Kevin and I gave her some puzzles, her long awaited “Tangled” sheets for her big girl bed, and a cradle and quilt for her baby doll. The cradle was mine when I was little. My dad was in the navy when I was very young and he was stationed in the Philippines for two years. During the time that we lived there, we had a Filipino maid named Gloria and a Filipino yard boy named Zaldi (I have no idea how to spell that name so I’m taking a guess). Zaldi was an amateur carpenter as well. He made a number of things that I remember including this baby doll cradle for me and a big doll house for my sister Patti. The cradle was originally bright green. Kev repaired it, sanded it down and repainted it. I had planned to stencil some designs on it, but with the craziness that has been the past week, it did not happen. I’ll get it done later.

(Random comment on this picture: While we were living in the Philippines there was a fire in the jungle behind our house. My mom took pictures of everything we had in the house just in case they were needed for insurance purposes. So that is why I have a picture of the cradle-full of junk it would seem-with no people in sight.)

So overall Malia had a pretty quiet birthday. A pretty quiet anything is a change from how things have been of late, so it was nice.