Indigo's Second Birthday!

The day before Indigo's birthday we had a lovely play day and picnic at the beach with Ellen and Sarah. On Indigo's actual birthday, I took her to work to have lunch with her Daddy and with her work aunties. We had a great lunch together and enjoyed cupcakes in her honor, and she enjoyed seeing everyone at the office. That evening, I cooked her favorite dinner of spaghetti. Ellen and Sarah came over to celebrate with us. Auntie Amy had sent a fantastic fruit bouquet to Indigo and so Indigo and Sarah just loved having that. After dinner we had cupcakes again and Sarah had two candles as well so that she could show Indigo how to blow them out. We had success after a few attempts. It was a lovely evening and a nice quiet celebration of the first birthday shared in person with our girl. Just as on referral day, it's another poignant moment, because I found myself wondering if her birth mother in China had thought of her on this day. We took her to the doctor for her two year check up the next day (I know - this did not really seem fair). Her statistics were all good, she weighed 25 lbs, 4oz which put her in the 35th percentile for weight and she was 35 inches tall, which they indicated put her in the 80th percentile for height. Her birthday seems to be a good spot for me to put some reminders about what else was happening "developmentally" at this time. Prior to April, she had been picking up words but just a few new words here and there, and just using them as singular words. Around mid-April, words seemed (to us anyway) to start exploding from her mouth and all of a sudden it seemed she could say whatever word she wanted to say (not that we could always understand). Then, we were watching for daddy to come home from work one day and watching the cars go by and she said "bye bye car" so I kind of consider that to be the first instance of our hearing several words together. From then on, words and 2-3 word sentences became the norm. Since this backs to May, we have come further since then, but will leave for future update. She also became enthralled with counting and could pretty steadily count to 10. It also seemed to be the turning point with actually knowing and correctly identifying colors. Before she could say the name of the color but identification was unreliable - considering how many color books we looked at - I wondered if she was color blind, but yes, as you laugh at me, that was just paranoia. She also got into naming shapes and would like us to draw shapes so she could name them. Her interest in coloring/drawing really picked up and became a favorite thing to do. Our girl is also wowed and fascinated by turtles! We're not quite sure how this came to be but she really likes turtles - hence the couple you will see on a log on her birthday cake. Gosh, it's hard to track this stuff. We live it every day and one day blends to the next. She also continues her love of books and reading takes up a part of every day - not just at bed time. I can't think of other stuff right and it's boring for the non-parents of Indigo, but as said before, this is also our journal for her. It all seems pretty fantastic to us. So, then Mom and Dad came back to us so that they could be here to celebrate the birthday (and they were a big help too). The birthday party was scheduled to be at one of our beaches and we had really hoped to have it there. We had the truck all packed the night before with everything going to the beach - the signs were made etc. However, early the morning of the party, the weather seemed very dicy and thunderstorms and lightning predicted. At some point, we finally just said, it's too risky, and we decided to host the party at the house. This meant trying to reach people to let them know, and unloading the truck, dad reposting signs to divert people back to house, getting the house set up to host a large number of people etc. Could not have done it all without the help of granny and granddaddy. The party was so fun (we thought). The kids had a blast out on the back patio blowing huge bubbles (and as the photos show, by kids, I mean some adults too); there was lots of fun playing indoors and then we had ordered pizzas to be delivered and we had the cake. Thanks to every one who came to help us celebrate this momentous event. Indigo got this Potatoe Head from my cousin and family, and as you can see, she just loved playing with it with granddad.