"I a Princess" Ella is 2!

I can hardly believe that my baby girl is 2!!! It seems like just yesterday I was carrying that almost 10 pound baby around in my belly (that memory will likely stick longer than I'd like-haha). Ella is quite a hoot and has a HUGE personality for a 2 year old. She insisted on having an "I a Princess" party, which is what we attempted to do at the pool. Daddy came home the day before, so we opted for a smaller party with Grandma, JonJon, Matthew, Christina and some close friends of ours, Derek and Jamie, and their little girl Zaila. Ella loves the swimming pool and is quite talented at pretty much swimming on her own with her swimmies on. She loves to jump off the edge with the big kids and is always sporting her goggles- on her forehead. Today she enjoyed playing tea set on the side of the pool with Zaila- whoever gave me the idea to bring a tea set to the pool, thanks! Ella has this funny way of being very social one moment and then acting shy and quiet the next. Well, I think she was overwhelmed when we were singing Happy Birthday to her because she just buried her head in Harbin's shoulder (that's her "buddy") and she wanted nothing to do with blowing out the candle. It took her a few moments to recover before she decided she really did want to eat the cupcake, so she better get over her shyness. Ella has grown so much over the last year. She is talking more than ever and in mostly complete sentences. She loves playing with babies and pushing the grocery cart all around the house. Just like the other kids, she loves to perform and is often dancing or singing songs at home. Her biggest development this year has to be how she interacts with Daddy on the computer. He was deployed the entire last year and she loves to Skype with him. I never really explained to her the concept about Skype, but she just knew. She would play peek-a-boo with Daddy and duck down so she couldn't see herself on the screen. Then she'd jump up and say "pee-a-boo". The most impressive thing to me was the time she wanted to read a book to daddy. She sat down in my lap with the book and started to read it and then said, oh, daddy not see it, so she turned it around and put it in front of the computer camera so he could see the book- how smart is that!! Well, enjoy some of these pics of Ella from her party. Happy Birthday, baby girl! Stop growing up so fast! The mom.