Mischevious, Independent, Adorable

Well, Mia will soon be turning two years old. It's hard to believe this can be true. She's changed so much that I thought I'd write a post entirely dedicated to our little Mia Monster.

trying on her big sister's cowgirl boots

The M in Mia stands for Mischievous. This adjective describes her perfectly. Today she ran into another room to play and was all too quiet. So after two minutes tops I went into the kitchen to find, she somehow climbed on top of the counters, found a basket where I keep some snacks, pulled out a bag of peanut M & Ms and proceeded to open and eat them. She was so proud when I found her. As I sit and type this she continually goes into the bathroom, closes the toilet lid, climbs on top of it so she can reach the sink and turns the water on to play in. The house is in constant disarray due to her always feeling the need to pull everything out. Baskets of toys are dumped, drawers of clothes emptied, cupboards of dishes emptied, food from the pantry cleared out, toilet paper rolls unwound, wipes and Kleenex boxes pulled clean, and I could go on and on. I finish cleaning up one mess only to turn around and realize five more have been made for me.

Stripping naked and trying on Olivia's tap shoes (I was careful to only get photos of her backside.) She's always naked so it's hard to get her on film with clothes on.

I is for Independent. This child wants to do everything for herself! She wants to feed herself, get drinks herself, pick out her clothes and dress herself, go on the big girl potty, which of course leads to her undressing herself and removing her diaper constantly. We're thrilled to see so much independence in her, but the mommy in me misses having a dependent little baby that needs her. The last of her dependence on me was her nursing, which we just ended two weeks ago. I was more than ready, but she didn't want to give it up. When the time came, it ended up being more emotional for me than I thought it would be. Just knowing she is probably my last baby makes every milestone she reaches sort of melancholy. I'm so happy to see her grow and develop, but it's hard to let go of my baby.

Mia yelling, "Down doggy!" and pointing for her to get down, because she knows Vada is not supposed to be on the sofa. She also hit her quite a few times and tried to pull her down herself. She's a pretty aggressive little stinker.

A is for Adorable. She drives us crazy, but she is so stinkin' adorable doing so, that any frustration is quickly cured just by seeing her smile. She doesn't talk near as much as Olivia did at her age, but we're learning quickly it's just because she doesn't need to. She gets what she wants for herself. Daily she brings me this little jar of lip balm with a twist off lid from the bathroom to apply. She's been getting the lid off herself so I have to tighten it super tight. Well, the other day I couldn't even open it and had to give it to Andy to open. The next time I saw her get it, she went straight past me carrying her stool as well. I went into the kitchen to find her atop her stool getting a gripper pad I occasionally use to open tough jars. She was using it to try and open the lip balm herself. I was so pleased to see her make that connection. Mia is definitely more clever than we thought. No matter what she does, she's adorable through it all. God truly blessed us with two amazing daughters. We are so fortunate for the years we've had with both our girls and look forward to many more to come.

adorable buns snooping in the closet

Super Snow Sunday

Forget Super Bowl Sunday. We celebrated Super Snow Sunday in our household! Olivia and Andy built a snow fort while I tried to get Mia down for a nap. Mia wasn't too interested in sleeping and we watched Andy and Olivia out the window and decided to join in on the fun.

Olivia and Mia climbing out of their snow fort, all smiles of course.

Andy even made our own little sledding hill in the front yard.

After sledding in our own yard for a bit, we decided it was a perfect day to hit Dead Man's Hill, Sturgis' ideal sledding hill. After Andy fractured his L1 and L2 last year sledding, he kept his sledding to a minimum, so mommy got to join in on some of the fun for a change. I was thrilled to get the opportunity to do so, although Olivia told me she wished daddy could be her sledding partner. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and headed home to warm up with some hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Olivia on one of her solo rides down the hill.

I know this entry is well over due, but life has been busy and there is also that naughty "f" word that no one dares to speak of around our house; (frontier). We've had so many problems with our Internet service for a couple of months now. I actually did a really long blog entry with these pictures on Super Bowl Sunday, but when I went to post it, we had no Internet so I lost it all. The problems seemed to be improved so here's to hoping it's not too long before our next posting.