Happy Birthday, Ashley Kate!

Today my sweet baby girl turns 2 years old!  I can hardly believe that she is two, much less believe that a whole year has passed already.  So much has happened since her last birthday!

We are unbelievably blessed to have such a wonderful little girl as our Katers.  While she is so much like Ella in some ways, she is quite different in others.  Which is exactly how I like it.  We can tell that Ashley is going to give us more trouble than her sister did because she has a devilish glint in her eye.  (I used to not really believe people when they would say that their child had that kind of look in their eye.  Not any more.)

Ashley loves to be outside, especially when playing with the dogs and cat is in order.  Unfortunately, she has picked up on a few things that we may or may not do in regard to the animals, mainly kicking at them and saying things like 'GO ON!'  In our defense, Thomas is quite possibly the most underfoot cat in the history of the world and I'm always afraid that I'm about to fall and Hank (that's New Dog's name) can't be trusted not to bolt into the house as soon as the door opens.  But Katers keeps them both at bay for us, all while landing zero death blows to the animals.

Our Baby Kate loves a lot of things in this world, but none come close to her rock solid love of milk (yea!) and Rabbit.  Rabbit is Ashley's night time stuffed animal/blankie thing.  She still sucks on the first two fingers on her right hand and likes to use the other two fingers on that same hand to rub the tag of whatever is in her left hand, be it a stuffed animal, blanket, or shirt, which is held up by her face.  Kind of like this picture, from a while back:

We can't convince our sweet baby to keep her shoes and socks on for the life of us, but we hope that once some cold weather gets here she will change her mind about going footloose and fancy free.  Maybe not.  She is her mother's daughter, after all!

Ashley Kate is making great improvements as far as her physical and communicative development goes.  She still has a bit of catching up to do, but considering how far she has come in the past few months we are thrilled.  She has started being able communicate with us well, giving us definite 'yes' and 'no' answers, as well as taking our hand and leading us to what it is she is trying to say or do.  So far she has made two word phrases, but I expect that that will be changing again soon.  About a month or two ago our sweet baby girl began acting like all two year olds do.  And while she was exasperating some of the folks at daycare (and her parents), we kept reminding ourselves that this was big!  It was merely four months before that she had begun to walk and talk, and now she's acting like a terrible two!  YEA!

Katers is moving a little ahead of pace when it comes to the all important potty.  She is interested in it, talks about it, and will tell us when she needs to go poop.  (Sorry, y'all, but such is the glamour and excitement!)  She hasn't actually done anything in the potty yet, but will readily sit on it.  I clearly remember Ella being well, well past two before she would even tell us that she needed to go to the potty, so WAY TO GO, BABY KATE!

Have you noticed that I have referred to Ashley in no less than 726 different ways?!  That's the way we do it around here, giving Ashley an identity crisis at every turn!  And just think, I haven't even mentioned Curly Kate!  Her curly hair, by the way, is one of the most astounding things to me since I never, ever, ever in a million zillion years considered that my children could have curly hair.  Did I mention EVER?  I still find myself in awe of her hair and will pull out her ringlets just to watch them spring back to place.  When will I get over this?  Maybe never.

There is much, much more to Ashley Kate these days but this is just a quick rundown for birthday documentation.  Happy Birthday, our sweet Ashley Kate Katers Baby Kate Curly Kate Ashley!