Happy Second Birthday Clara Jane!

Our Birdie turned two today.  The whole family serenaded her with Happy Birthday first thing this morning, which she and Joe both seemed to love.  This afternoon, she visited Dr. Harrington for her two-year well-child exam.  Birdie weighed in at 30 pounds (86%), measured 35 3/4" (93%), and save a slight cold and a little eczema, was found to be doing just beautifully. (So she got two shots.  Isn't that always the way?)

Birdie took this picture herself at the doctor's office.  (That may go without saying.)

After our visit to Dr. Harrington, we went back to school where Clara's teachers hosted a quiz pitting their two-year-olds against those two-year-olds' parents.  The two-year-olds who are about to graduate from the "twos" room to the first of the three pre-school rooms dominated everyone, but we got to see Clara find the C with which her name begins on the floor with no hesitation whatsoever.  Finding the letter with which one's name begins is, apparently, is how every group time starts.  We learned that Clara always gets up from her chair and then sits down on the floor to find her letter before getting up and heading back to her chair.  After the quiz, we collected Joe and headed home for a birthday dinner of hamburgers and potato chips and, of course, birthday cake.  We also opened presents.  Joe was very excited to open presents and didn't seem to care that they weren't for him.  He did seem to care that Clara understood she should want to open her presents after eating her cake.

So Birdie is two.  She seems awfully big.  She's tall for her age, and she's got quite the mop of hair now.  She's older than Joe was when she was born (which makes Joe seem terribly big as well).  She knows an awful lot, too.  When she was out of the bath and into her pajamas and thus, ready for books, it was a little early, and Julie was in the midst arranging flowers.  So Birdie got the shape sorter cube out.  Brigade, she is the master of the shape sorter cube.  You should see her go!  She can get most of them in the right holes on the first try, even the tricker ones like the crescent that one has to turn just so to get to go in, as opposed to a square which has four sides that are all the same.  She flips that cube around all boom-boom-boom.

After the shape sorter had been tamed (three times) by Our Clever Birdie, it was time to read books.  One of the books Julie selected was Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus because Clara always laughs at the bit where the pigeon completely loses it about not being allowed to drive the bus.  Brigade, she repeated every sentence of the book after Julie as Julie went along.  !!!!!  Of course, not every word was clear as a bell, but that's exactly what Birdie was doing.

So that's a snapshot of the day, and of Birdie at two. . .Two.  That's something else again, and so is she.