A flower crown for the girl...

The evening of Ella's 2nd birthday we decided to walk down to the dana point harbor and take some photos of her. It's something I would love to do every year on my babies birthdays. 

She sure is loved.

Although these days have been a bit more challenging with the 'terrible two' phase.

I wake up every day grateful for my little miss independent. "ella do it" is her favorite thing to say these days. She has quite the preference on how things should be done and is seeing how much she can get a way with in just about every area of life. 

She loves to chat. ALL. THE. TIME. We will be driving around in the car and I will often hear, mama...talk with me. Her vocab is kind of remarkable. 

She recently is loving books.  Lines them all up in the order she wants us to read them to her every night. 

  hates when things are "broken". You can't ever break her food. 

I know I sound like a broken record in this category but... still crazy about singing and dancing. We have A LOT of dance parties together. She sings "alice the camel..." just about everywhere we go. It's such a funny song but one she totally loves. She also loves to sing the ABCs and count. She can count to 13 and thinks she's the bomb every time. 

While I'm a broken record...let's talk about how much she still loves her "paints, chalks, and coloring"

"mama..lets paints together" Always. 

She's expressive. So many different facial expressions.

Happy face, silly face, scared face, hyper face, she's just an open book and so easy to read. 

She recently has started to understand the concept of "princesses" 

She was absolutely crushed when she realized that the princess at the birthday party had to go home to her castle. Talks about it every day. 

She's LOUD. Full of life. And tries to show off for crowds. 

If we ever have visitors heaven forbid. She loses her mind twirling and jumping and singing and climbing all over them. 

Her memory is 500% better than mine. 

Loves rocks and sticks.

Loves hopping like a frog while saying ribbit ribbit. 

Loves to run fast and hard and everywhere we go. 

Loves when Ben and I hug and kiss. Especially loves to be sandwhiched in between us while we kiss her cheeks. 

She's wearing me out lately. energy for daysssss. this girl. But she is crazy awesome, and hilarious.

And where would I be without my favorite little gal pal.

Can't wait for this next year together little one.