Camille Turns 2!

I guess I need to state the obligatory mom comment: I can't believe my baby is already two years old!

We began the festivites with Camille's favorite food: Pasta and bread!

We had a simple celebration with family tonight. Claire insisted that we play games, so we hung a big picture of a cake and played "Pin the candle on the cake." The Birthday Girl wouldn't play, but the other two sure loved it!

Because we have her and Audra's Birthday so close together, I opted for a fruit pizza instead of cake. I loved it, but the girls not so much.

Camille started acting silly- she loves to be silly. She stuck her fork in her mouth and started swinging her head around.

 Now for the presents! The older girls were very helpful!

 She got a pair of shoes from Grandma and Grandpa M. and she went around for about 5 minutes showing them off and saying, "shu! Shu!"

 She was pretty excited about this toy:

 This is the best we could do for a family picture. Notice how Claire has her arms wrapped around Camille's legs- this is indicative of how Claire is always needing to touch Camille in some way:

 Then we headed outside where Camille could show off her new dress and play with her bubble toy:

At age 2 Camille continues to delight our little family. She has definitely started in on tantrums, but they are usually pretty short and she quickly moves on. After having dealt with Claire, I can handle whatever Camille brings.

She LOVES cheese. She ALWAYS wants cheese.

She is talking pretty well now with one syllable words. She says, "cheez! cheez!" or "shu!" (shoe) or any other number of things. In the past couple of months her language has really started to take off.

She loves playing with her older sisters (though she is wary of Claire because Claire constantly insists on smothering her). She thinks that whatever they can do, she can do as well. And for the most part, she can. She keeps up quite well with them, and definitely holds her own.

Camille absolutely loves dogs. She has an uncanny ability to spot dogs wherever they roam and will always say "ruff! ruff!" when she sees one.

She is very polite. She always says "tank you" until you respond with "you're welcome," and sometimes she just says it over and over and over again and you just have to keep saying "you're welcome" about a hundred times until she stops.

She is emphatic. If one of the other girls is crying, she'll go give them a hug and say, "sorry!"

Around smaller kids she can be a little bossy- we have started to notice that. We think it is because she is used to being the smallest one in our family, so when somebody smaller comes along she wants to assert her "big kid" role.

She still takes one nap. It usually last about 90 minutes long, and hopefully she won't outgrow her nap for awhile yet.

She is another fashionista- that makes three for three with our girls. She wants to choose her clothes (and she often chooses her footy pajamas) and really likes to play dress up with her older sisters.

We LOVE LOVE LOVE her curls! I hope they never go away!

She loves bath time. She races to the tub as soon as we say "bath time!"

She LOVES dolls- especially Audra's dolls. She takes Audra's doll and undresses her and loses the clothes, which makes Audra upset to go to school for fear that Camille will find her doll. It has become quite the doll-tastrophe.

She doesn't like socks. Like Claire, she has a foot fettish and if the sock isn't on exactly right it drives her nuts. The problem is that she gets dry, cracked, and bloody toes because she doesn't wear socks.

Every nap time and bed time I read her four books- they are always the same: "What Can Simon Be?", "Daddy Hugs", "Olivia Counts," and "Barnyard Friends." Then I sing her a song, give her a kiss, and lay her in her crib, where she immediately falls asleep.

I asked Claire what she thought of Baby Camille and she said, "Camille is beautiful. And cute."

I asked Audra the same question and she said, "She's good."

Overall, she is pretty awesome. Sweet and fiesty- she is a good mix of both Audra and Claire, and we sure love having her in the family!