Happy Birthday Hannah!!!!!

Today's the day that Hannah officially entered what I, so far, consider to be the terribly awesome 2's.  Aside from that power struggle phase she hit around 19 months, I think this age is awesome.  You can keep the whole baby phase--I'll take a talking, walking toddler any day!

She's really growing up too.  She leaves the house more and more often in underwear with few accidents.  I've even started leaving her in the kids room at the gym without a diaper--just one day a week until she gets used to having Miss Hope put her on the potty, but still, that's good progress!  As for boobies, she's letting go of those too.  Two days ago she made it through an entire day with no boobies at all! Most days she still nurses first thing in the morning, but that's it.  It's happening!

She's also learning her colors which I guess is part of learning to talk and wanting to label everything.  We had Mouse Paint out of the library in our last batch of books, and she loved that one so I think that jump started the color thing.

Alright, enough blabbing, on with the pictures!  We have a big birthday weekend, and today was just the start! My dad and Sondra came early today bearing balloons and a present.  Hannah was watching out the window as they walked up the sidewalk so she was excited before they even got in the door.

And right about here is where the battery on my camera died, and I had to switch to cell phone.  And right about here in the post, is where my computer died, and then Eric's died, but then I got his to start working again. It's almost 11 which is WAAAAAAY past my bed time, but I'm going to persevere a bit longer. Unfortunately, Eric's computer doesn't have photo editing software so the cell phone pics are not edited since I didn't email them to myself until after the internet killed my computer.

Anyway, it's a bed tent!!  Woohooo!

They played in the bed tent for a very long time while Eric and I got to work in the kitchen making cupcakes (found a recipe with no sugar, just a tablespoon of honey in a cooking for babies and toddlers cookbook) and then prepping all the food for tomorrow.

After a while I coaxed them out of the bed tent and outside to get some fresh air and take advantage of the temperature not being 100 degrees.

My little climber! She's after my heart with all this climbing she's doing.

Pappy and Grandma Sondra brought her Easter basket up that we left behind along with a few empty eggs. She carried that thing everywhere we went this morning, taking the eggs in and out of the basket and separating them and then putting them back together again.

An egg half makes a great clown nose.

Don't worry, I didn't forget about the 2-year comparison pics!  Let's use this one of Hannah since it's a great face shot...

And here's 2-year old Eric,on the right (with Uncle Justin on the left).

And here's 2-year-old Terri holding my new baby brother!

To be honest, I haven't even looked at these pics closely to compare them because getting this post up has been a 3-hour affair involving a number of computers and phones and hard drives and insanity and frankly, I'm tired. This is way past my bedtime and we have a BIG day tomorrow with lots of my family coming up to celebrate Hannah's birthday.  Lots more pics to come....

Also, there's no way in H-E-double hockey sticks that I'm taking the time tonight to edit this thing so I'm sorry in advance about the plethora of typos.