Aleta's Birthday

My baby Aleta turned 2 this month!  I can't believe my youngest child is already 2.  I wanted to have a little party for her, but we have been so incredibly busy (and so incredibly tired) the past few weeks, and the thought of trying to plan a party just made me want to cry.  So I decided she didn't need a party!  Instead, we invited our next-door neighbors Katie & Justin (They are nursery leaders at church, and Aleta just LOVES them) over for Aleta's birthday dinner and cake, and we had a nice, relaxing night at home.  We had spaghetti & meatballs (one of the kids' favorite meals), and Aleta opened presents, and we had cake and ice cream.  Although we didn't actually eat ice cream, because I forgot that it was in the freezer, which is exactly what I did for Jacob's birthday back in September, too!  At least this time I hadn't bought 4 half gallons of it for a party... we probably gained 10 pounds from eating all that ice cream ourselves after Jacob's party!

It's a terrible picture, but it's the only one I got during dinner!

Aleta was super excited about her cake.  She gobbled up her piece and then sat there screaming, "I need more cake!  I need more cake!".  She loved it!  Naomi, on the other hand, has never really liked cake.  She tells me she wants cake, or a cupcake, and then just licks off the icing and says she's done.

She didn't think a fork was necessary.

Naomi was very excited for party hats.  She was with me a few weeks ago at the Dollar Tree, and she saw the hats in the party aisle and begged me for some.  Since Aleta's birthday was coming up, we bought a pack.  It's been a week since Aleta's birthday, and Naomi will still occasionally decide to wear one of the party hats for meals.  Silly girl!

We got Aleta a big stuffed owl, which Naomi picked out... that girl really loves owls for some reason!  Naomi and I were grocery shopping at Walmart a couple months ago, and she saw the big stuffed owl and got so excited.  But I had already promised to sew Naomi the stuffed owl she saw & wanted on Pinterest, so she really didn't need a second stuffed owl (Naomi doesn't play with stuffed animals much, anyway).  Aleta, on the other hand, loves stuffed animals.  She carries them everywhere and cuddles them and hugs them.  So Naomi and I decided to buy it for Aleta for her birthday!  It's called a pillow pet, I think, and it was only 12 dollars, which I thought was a pretty good price for the size of it!

Aleta will occasionally share her owl with Naomi.

Her other gift was a toy broom set.  Aleta has a thing for brooms... I don't get it!  If they leave the broom out in the nursery room at church, Aleta will run right to it and start playing with it.  She does the same thing here at home, or at Nanny & Granddaddy's house, or anywhere she can find a broom.  She loves them!  So she has been loving her toy broom!  And I got it for free with my Swagbucks giftcards, which was pretty awesome!    I started doing Swagbucks this year, and I love it so much!  If you haven't heard of it, when you sign up for an account, you can earn "swagbucks" for doing surveys, or watching little videos, or playing games, or searching the web using their search engine.  I get most of mine through surveys.  Then with the swagbucks, you can buy gift cards to lots of places, like Amazon or Walmart or Target.  I paid for almost our entire Christmas this year with Amazon gift cards I got from Swagbucks.  I added it up, and I got about $140 worth of free stuff!  Pretty freakin' awesome. (I will be posting more later about all the free stuff I got for Christmas!)

A little bit about my beautiful 2-year-old:
Aleta loves "reading" books and will sit for a long time by herself, just looking through all of our books.  She even picks up my books, which have no pictures, and sits there "reading" them.  She is really good at playing by herself.  I'll quite often find her in the playroom, playing alone quietly.  She also loves playing with Naomi, of course.  One of their favorite games recently is to turn our big rocking/arm chair thing so its back is next to the couch, and then they climb on top of it and then jump/flop onto the couch cushions.  Over and over and over.  Aleta loves painting and coloring.  She's usually pretty good about keeping it on paper, but I have had to clean up the walls a few times since we've moved here!  She calls all of those coloring activities "color paint".  So when she asks to "color paint" she either wants crayons, markers, or paint, and I have to figure out which one.  She is a pretty good eater, most of the time.  She will often eat twice as much as Naomi.  And she LOVES fruits & vegetables (especially fruit, like watermelons & grapes), which is nice!  She loves shoes and is almost always wearing her boots or a pair of shoes, even if she's not wearing any clothes (which is often the case).  I don't know what it is about little kids and being naked!

A funny story about Aleta from the other day... I was giving Aleta some crackers, which she calls "crack".  So every time she needed more, she would start yelling, "I need more crack!  I need more crack!".   It made me laugh. :)

Here are a few pictures taken on her actual birthday (we had her little party the day before)... her face is covered in sticky candy cane residue, in case you were wondering.  Somehow I didn't notice until after taking all of the pictures!

She's saying "Cheese"

 

Happy Birthday, my darling girl!  We love you so much!