Cora Jane, TWO

Dusting off the very neglected blog to bring you a BIRTHDAY POST! Cora Jane turned two years old and my brain is constantly doing this GIF below because I can't comprehend it.

I was supposed to be addressing Christmas cards tonight because UPS SAID they were going to be delivered to my house tonight and yet they are not. here. so instead I'm writing about it in Cora's birthday post because that's about all I can do about it.

ANYWAY. What can I tell you about this fantastic girl?
She is smart, spunky, a crowd-pleaser, almost always a bottomless pit, and honestly we love her seriously to bits. She's the star of the family and makes us laugh pretty much 24/7.

She says the FUNNIEST things.
Some recent Cora-isms:
Me: Cora, do you think the baby is a boy or a girl?
Cora: Uhh...a baby DURL!
Me: Okay, if it's a girl what should we name it?
Cora: Uhh...BEEKFAST!

Every time she sees a Nativity scene or pretty much anything to do with Christmas:
"Baby Deedus! Born! NOW!"
(In her defense sometimes there's a please in there but definitely not most of the time.)

"Wooooooow! Fufee wights!"
= wow, Christmas lights!, anytime she sees Christmas lights...and they're everywhere in our house and all over, obviously.

"KITTY. COME. HEUH."
But she can't really say her K sounds yet so it's more of a T sound which is...hilarious.

Some of her favorite things right now:
+ Coloring with her Melissa and Doug water coloring books
+ Running around in the basement in circles
+ Wearing her Halloween costume (a Wonder Woman cape)
+ Watching Daniel Tiger
+ Her bunny and Sherry, her giraffe
+ Taking her clothes off for absolutely no reason whatsoever
+ Turning the lights on and off (not allowed, doesn't seem to make a difference)
+ Playing outside with her car/scooter/etc.
+ Calling her relatives on my phone
+ Giving running and jumping hugs
+ Eating chicken nuggets AND TETCHUP, which is her all-time favorite food
+ Reading books with her big sister

Honestly this age between 18 months and around 2 1/2 has been proven to be one of my faaaavorite little kid stages. Watching them learn language in the most hilarious ways possible combined with the sassiness and independence that explodes at the same time is just a great day-maker each and every day. Plus they're not really old enough to be disobedient yet, or at least not on purpose, and they still have the cute pudgy baby bellies that you just want to smooch all the time.

It definitely feels weird having two toddlers, like, am I old enough to do this? And then when I think about that I'm like oh MAN I'm pregnant, I gotta stop forgetting that, we'll soon have two toddlers and a newborn...and yeah it can get a little overwhelming somewhat quickly. But honestly the level of crazy and noise around here is so high that I am not worried about adding a baby to the mix -- at least, not yet -- because it's crazy already so like, how much crazier can it feel? It'll just be the new normal.

All that to say that Cora seems to be excited about the baby when we talk about it, but I think mostly because her big sister is excited so she just knows it's something to be excited about in general, not that she knows what's going on in any sense. We'll see how she does when baby gets here...plenty of time between now and then.

Some of my favorite photos of her in the last year to round out the post:

I have a ton more photos that I could obviously include but I'm not going to, because there are just too many to go through. (I also need to get all my photos off of my old computer, which officially won't start anymore...so say a prayer that I can at least recover some of them because if not this is the only photo I have of Cora in the hospital and I'm not even sure how it popped up on this computer? so yeah. Patron saint of technology, please come to my aid.)

I hope you too, get a Cora Jane joy in your life...or come experience ours because she is pretty magical. We love you, baby, and can't wait to watch you grow more!
HG