Eden - 23 Months

I HATE that I was facing the sun when I took this picture and the coloring is all yucky.  I moved the chair after this and got some pictures with good lighting, but ultimately I HAD to choose this one because I couldn't pass up that grin! 

This is my last time to take a monthly picture of Eden in her little pink chair as I'm going to do something different when she turns two.  Which I cannot believe is only a month away.  I know people ALWAYS say that.  But really - I CANNOT BELIEVE IT.  Like, I think I must be dreaming because I KNOW it has not been almost two years since she was born.  Nope.  Not possible. 

Y'all, she is so big.  Today she told me to put on my seat belt.  Okay, maybe she didn't say the words, "Mom, put on your seat belt", but I was driving home from my dad's house, and since I was on a dirt road, I didn't put it on, and she kept yelling at me, "BELT, BELT, BELT".  I said, "Do you want me to put on my seat belt?", and she said, "Yeah!".  So there you go.  Big.

Since this is my last time to give a little monthly update on Eden, I'm going to be even more obnoxious than usual as I go on and on about how wonderful and perfect my child is.  But really, she is.

Look at that!  A bow!  She has enough hair for a bow now!  Maybe not... but I've started sticking one on her head anyway.  Now if I don't put a bow in her hair, she gets upset with me and starts yelling "BOW, BOW, BOW" at me.  So I put a bow in her hair, and then she rips it out five minutes later.

I study her a lot.  Usually when she's asleep.  I just stare and stare and memorize her features.  And y'all, she really is perfect.  I LOVE her strawberry blond hair.  It is adorable.  She already has nice, thick eyebrows.  And did she ever luck out with her eyes.  She got my blue eyes, but Dustin's lonnnggg, thick eyelashes.  Perfection.  I'm so jealous of their eyelashes.  She has the cutest little upturned nose, chubby little cheeks and rosy-colored lips.  SHE IS BEAUTIFUL.

As her little personality continues to blossom, it's so fun to see traits that are me and traits that are Dustin.  But the best are the traits that don't seem to come from either of us - the ones that are just Eden.  She is headstrong.  She is adventurous.  She is not afraid of much at all.  Dustin is so proud that he can shoot a gun, and she has no reaction to the loud noise.  She's attached to me, but she is fine if I'm gone.  My mom watched her the other day, and she told me later that it doesn't bother Eden when I leave, and she's fine the whole time I'm gone, but boy does she get excited when I come back!  Awww.  She is happy.  Oh, so very happy.  She is sweet and still comes up to me for hugs and kisses throughout the day.  She is girlie.  She is outdoorsy.  She is the perfect combination of princess and warrior. 

She loves Mickey Mouse, bananas, books, stickers, animals, coloring, stacking random objects, rare steak, her baby doll, running in circles, taking baths, bugs, brushing her teeth, balls and covering her face with a blanket and then running until she hits something.  Kids are adorable.  And kinda weird. 

I don't know what Dustin and I did before her!  We surely didn't laugh as often.  She is our entertainment.  So many evenings are spent with us just sitting on the couch watching her... watching her twirl and run and play and dance and laugh. 

She likes to copy whatever I'm doing.  She goes and gets her little broom and sweeps the floor when I sweep.  But really all she does is mess up the piles that I've already swept up.  When I wash my face in the mornings, she stands on her step-stool and splashes water all over her face too.  The other night I was laughing at something so hard that I covered my face with my hands.  I looked up and she was covering her face with her hands too!

Sometimes she does the most random things, and I would love to know what she was thinking!  Just now, she told my camera "night-night" and covered it with a blanket. 

She learned how to get out of her crib at the end of November.  I heard her fussing one evening after I had already put her to bed, so I went upstairs to see what was wrong.  I opened her bedroom door and there she was, right on the other side of the door.  My granny always tells us stories about how my dad used to climb out of his crib with his toes.  I put Eden back in her crib to see how she got out.  Up that little monkey went, using her toes to climb.  My grandma said that she used to put socks on my dad, and then he couldn't do it anymore.  That doesn't work with Eden.... she pulls socks right off, and she has even managed to take off footie pajamas in the night.  We decided it was time to get her a big girl bed before she broke an arm, but the bed I want isn't available until February, so for the time being we just took the side railing off of her crib, and she has a little toddler bed.  It was hell for a few nights trying to get her to STAY IN BED as she did not understand the concept of staying in bed when there was nothing stopping her from getting out.  But she eventually caught on (because I kept yelling at her), and now I love that the railing is gone because when I put her to bed, I curl up in it too and read books and sing songs, and it's so sweet, even though it makes me sad that we haven't used the rocking chair in a month.  By the way, my dad was thrilled to hear that Eden got his crib-crawling-out genes.  Most nights she ends up coming to our room around two or three a.m. and finishes the night in our bed.  I would love that a lot more if she wasn't such a restless sleeper - Dustin and I spend the early morning hours getting kicked and punched.

But then she wakes up and looks like this, and it's the most adorable thing ever so I don't really care that I just got kicked for three hours straight.

I call her mine.  All the time.  But she's not, is she?  She belongs to God.  I feel so blessed that God gave me her to raise and that she gets to be my daughter for this short, little time that we are on Earth.  As she's hitting two and starting to understand more and more and trying to figure out what kind of place this world is, my prayer these days usually includes, "Dear God, please don't let me screw this up!"

SIX DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!  I'm so flippin' excited about Christmas this year, I can hardly stand it.  We have some good stuff planned for our little Princess Warrior!