In Your SELF Interest: 2.5 years (although today is actually her 2 year 7 month bday...just a little behind, as usual :)

Celebrating her two and a half year birthday with a super simple (and delicious) zucchini muffin and

a candle.

This girl is all energy and spunk. She is tough and can totally hold her own. It is not rare for me to walk in to a room to find her pinning Shae to the ground (sorry Shae). She LOVES wrestling him.

She's independent and is ALWAYS getting in to something. She is super curious and wants to do all the things, all on her own. The other day we found her getting the blender out and putting pretzels in so that she could make herself a smoothie. She is always pulling chairs wherever she needs them to reach whatever she wants to get--which is everything. She's a bit of a wild one, always keeping us on our toes.

With that said, she has also just recently become super girly. She LOVES playing dress up, especially when she is at her little girlfriend's homes and they let her wear their princess dresses (heaven).

We were given a hand-me-down Elsa dress about a year ago and while she has always enjoyed wearing it, it is now ALL she wants to wear. We don't let her wear it everyday, for obvious reasons, so when she's not wearing that she is yanking every single other dress she has off of her hangers bringing them to us. A few days ago she woke us up holding out a dress to us saying "Dress, me, wear." When I grabbed her and pulled her in to bed and said, "No, let's just cuddle,"and threw the dress on the ground, she jumped down and got it and then proceeded to crawl back in bed with me, snuggling the dress in her arms while we cuddled. It is a fight to get her to wear anything but dresses these days. Lucky for her we had some friends give us some of their daughter's hand-me-down dresses a few weeks back so she was able to add a few to her closet (although I really need to secretly get rid of a few really old ones that I don't like much).

Basically, this entire post could be about Belén’s wardrobe. She is just SO in to what she is wearing. I think it's because she has been given so many tv/movie character clothes recently (which I don't usually buy for my kids, but happily accept from others). She is all about the Dora nightgown and the Minnie and Elsa sweatshirts, the Elsa rain boots, and the Elsa dress. But then, she also loves her pink zebra shirt, and her butterfly shirt, and her fox shirt. So really, she just loves clothes (and pink! She does not hold back making it known that her favorite color is pink. And it's hers, it can't be anyone else's).

She doesn't just sit and listen to books on end. She'll say, "Me read it," before I can read it, or if not before, definitely after, making it hard to read book after book after book. She always has to look at it on her own too.

She's been talking about hot dogs a lot lately. Requesting hot dog songs before naps, etc. But just today we realized that hot dog and hedgehog sound exactly the same. She loves the hedgehog in Sing and today was talking about the hedgehog, all the while we thought she was talking about hot dogs again, until we finally figured out it was the hedgehog.

She has a speech therapy evaluation on Friday. We probably understand about 50% of what she says, maybe more? It's hard enough and there are enough frustrating moments for both her and us that we thought it was time to look in to it.

It cracks me up when she calls a guitar "coo-tar," which is a mash up of "cool guitar." But I really think she thinks it is called a coo-tar.

When she sees more than one of something she always says, "Look mom! Three, four, five!" Even though there are usually just two of said something. For example, at the pool the other day she saw two purple pool noodles and says, "Look mom! Purple noodle! Three, four, five!"

She announces randomly, "Me Wonderwomen!" throughout the day.

She can just about count to 20 (gets a few numbers mixed or forgotten in the late teens). The only letter in the alphabet she really knows is B and she will announce every time, "B: BAY-WIN!"

She won't hold my hand unless there is nothing else in it. If i'm holding the keys and I try to grab her hand with that hand, she flips, until I move the keys to my other hand. She wants the whole hand all to herself.

Our good friend Eppie gifted Belén this tutu before she moved a few months back. Apparently Belén would ask to wear it every single time she was at their house, so they gave it to her. She is obsessed with it and because of it is always pretending she is a little ballerina, which is SO. CUTE.

She dances around the living room and then kicks her leg in the air (tongue and leg go up together, ha, the focus) and announces that she is doing ballet. It really is so adorable. Notice the tutu under the beloved Dora nightgown...

She is very particular about how I drive (which only drives me batty). "Go slow mom!" "Go faster!!!" And always, always always at a red light: "GO MOM GO!!" Every single time. I have to explain to her that I have to wait for the green light, every. single. time.

She calls exercise "oo aas" because of the Bedtime Sandra Bonyton book. When we read the work out page I always start going "oo aa,"like pumping iron noises. So now she will ask me, "You do your oo aas mom?"

Before bed she will always yell out "I love you more! I love you the most!"

She has started saying to us, "One second mom," then continues to do what she was doing, even though we have asked her to do something else. I have no idea where she learned that one (guilty).

She still naps most days, although some days it can be a real struggle. Over the past month she has started waking up earlier, usually between 6:30 and 7 a.m. which is the earliest she has ever woken up in her life (she's always been THE best sleeper!) Now that she wakes up earlier it has made nap time SLIGHTLY easier, at least more likely to happen. But then there are the days where she just fights it so hard and comes in and out of the crib and the room a zillion times and all I can do to not go crazy on her is just to give up. Those days are hard on me. I clearly need her to nap more than she needs it. There have been a day or two where I've been able to rock her and she'll fall asleep which is just so sweet.

On the days where she refuses to nap I've started to try and teach her how quiet time works. I love love love quiet tie with Shae so much, but it took months to get to the point where he got it and would actually leave me alone for a solid hour and a half. So far she just rips the door handle lock right off and comes in and out a bunch.

A lot of days at nap time she asks to sleep in Shae's bed which I am fine with as long as she stays in bed, and she usually does. It's pretty cute to see her in his "big kid" bed. Which should really be hers if we would just pull the trigger and buy a new bed for Shae, she's been climbing out of the crib for months now.

Love her belting out her song in the below picture. In the Elsa dress, of course.

The only thing she likes more than dresses is being naked. She can take off her own clothes without too much difficulty and some days after I've put them back on her a few times already I just give in and let her be naked. Kids are exhausting. You gotta choose your battles. This particular day she pulled all her clothes off, got in to the stickers and announced, "I wear stickers today."

This picture is of the stickers on the bum, but check out that hair. I just don't know how to do it! It's super curly, and super straight all at the same time. What do I do?!