Cheers! Happy 21st!

Miss Alli Ru "turned" 21 months old... and she truly amazes us more each day. We are in awe of her... watching her learn and grow has been such a joy. I wish I could just bottle up a day of hanging out with her and post it on here for all of you to see! But, that's not possible, so, I'll try my best to mention some of the adorable, smart, funny things she does.

Alli LOVES coloring. But mainly these days, that just consists of taking her crayons out and naming each color as she sets the crayon down on the paper. Or, she'll color just a little with each crayon as she says the color... "Blue!!! Hi blue!!" She knows so many colors... even her teacher Miss Cathy was impressed at her knowledge and memory of each color. Each morning when she sees us, she tells us what color we are wearing, and what color Aiden is wearing.

Alli also loves anything to do with her "baby bo". As we've mentioned previously, she is very attached and protective of him. The entire drive to school each day, she just stares at him in his car seat, since hers is facing forward and his is facing backward, and when he coo's and squeaks to her, she mimics him and "talks" back to him. She gives him a huge kiss goodbye each morning (even though she's right next door in her own classroom!), and each night before bed she kisses and hugs him, and says "bye guys!" as she walks into her bedroom.

She's still quite obsessed with Elmo... and I'm thinking that her 2nd birthday is going to have to be Elmo/Sesame Street themed. We'll see, I've already found a lot of great ideas that I love. But, one thing I do not love is the fact that I'm even having to think about her 2nd birthday already! Holy cow. Anyway, she calls my car "Elmo Car" since I have the DVD player with Elmo movies in it... and she knows to grab the remote and head over to the TV to get us to play a DVR'ed Sesame Street episode. She loves saying "forrrr you" like Elmo does, and she sings along with "that's Elmo's song!" She's also taken quite a liking to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as she gets to watch it most mornings with Eric while getting ready for school. However, she calls Mickey Mouse "Hot Dog" because they do the "Hot Dog Dance" at the end of each episode... so, I think she thinks Mickey's name is Hot Dog. It's pretty funny.

She's amazing at stacking blocks, and becomes so focused and deep in concentration. She can stack them SO high, I'm definitely impressed. Aunt Bacon was too when she came to visit!

Alli's also quite an amazing swimmer. Most people that see her at the pool ask us how old she is and are very impressed at her "swimming skills" at such a young age. She kicks and uses her arms and is able to balance in the pool very well. She just LOVES the water. Recently, we've been taking both Alli & Aiden to the pool in the early morning hours on the weekends and we've had the pool to ourselves. She loves to swim with baby bo, even though he usually just falls asleep as soon as he gets in the water with me.

She talks ALL the time these days as well. I can't even begin to list everything she says, she basically says anything you say to her. She makes us laugh every day by goofy things she says or does. I really need to start writing them down. Most days, when she does something so cute or funny, Eric and I will say to each other, "Oh! That's blog post worthy!"... and then, we forget what we were going to write about. Typical.

So, instead of getting a drink on her 21st, especially because it's only her 21st month, she got a great spagetti dinner, which she absolutely devoured. Also typical. The kid loves to eat.