Nora Turns T W O !!!

Here I am, crying all the ugly cries because my baby girl is TWO today!  It's true what they say: the days can be long, but the months and years are short.  How did she go from this teeny-tiny 6 pound baby:

to a whopping 30 pound toddler?!?!

So what is our girl up to these days?  She still loves books and now reads them to us (go look at my recent Instagram video of her reading "Your Baby's First Word Will Be Dada" - it's the best!).  She loves to give squeezes and kisses but is also quick to say "no kiss mommy" when I've given her too many.  She's a great eater - current favorite foods are quinoa, tofu, acai bowls, and most importantly apple sauce!  She has to have an apple sauce every.single.day.  We potty trained back in June and she totally rocked it!  She still has a diaper at night just in case, but that's it! {I highly recommend reading "Oh Crap, Potty Training!" it worked great for us!}  She loves to be outside and is happiest when she's at the beach swimming in the ocean.  She's quite the world traveler - she's visited five countries and has taken countless flights.  Our goal is to have her passport filled by the time we leave Japan!  She's still not a great sleeper, but getting better.  She takes a solid nap everyday and usually wakes 2-3 times a night.  Baby steps...she'll sleep one day.  Right???  She loves her friend Natalie and talks about her non-stop.  She always shows me toys or objects and says "Natalie hold" (her way of saying she wants to share that item - even though most of the time Natalie's not even there - it's down right adorable and still makes me melt!).

We had a little party for Nora over the weekend to celebrate her birthday.  Her favorite part: the bounce house, of course!  She also had her first bite of cake (although, you know me, it was a naturally-sweetened cake, aka no sugar!) and loved it too!  We didn't go crazy with decorations (not Pinterest-worthy), but I did spend a good amount of time making goody-bags for all the kids that came.  I've been practicing hand-lettering lately and wanted to use my new skill to write each kids' name on their bag.  I think they turned out great!  Of course we were so busy playing and eating that we totally forgot to take a lot of pictures, but here are the highlights:

Prob my favorite photo from the party: the look of disappointment when the candles blew out when I took the cake outside! 

Cake face!

We have been so blessed with this girl and I'm so grateful to be her mom!  She brings me more joy than I ever thought possible (I know Jonathan feels the same!).  We love you Nora and we can't wait to see what this next year brings you!