Happy Birthday Kilynn!

We celebrated Kilynn's second birthday today. Her birthday really isn't until Tuesday, but Joseph had two different church responsibilities for this Tuesday night. Therefore, we decided last night to celebrate her birthday today. Kilynn has been excited about birthdays for awhile now because she has a book about the seven dwarfs throwing a birthday party for Snow White. It's one of her favorite books, actually, and she has learned all about birthday cake, balloons, streamers, and party hats from that book. I made sure I included all those traditional party things so she would really feel like it was her birthday. There wasn't anything too fancy, especially since we threw it all together last minute. I guess the theme was: Traditional Birthday Party! Last night I put up streamers and blew up balloons. She was pretty excited to walk out and see them this morning!

She was SO excited about the balloons! She kept throwing them around and exclaiming, "Bahwooms in Home! Bahwooms in Home!!"

Her pajamas were bothering her and she insisted on taking them off. I had to get a few pictures of this skinny minny jumping in the balloons. (She's really not as skinny as she looks in this picture. She's sucking in her tummy. We do feed her!)

She did want her boots on. Whatever you want on your birthday right?

I made some pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and we gave her a practice run on blowing out candles. She did a good job...too good in fact, because she started blowing as soon as we started singing Happy Birthday.

In the evening we invited our neighbors across the street over to eat some cake and ice cream with us.

I was going to try and do something fancy and creative with the cake, but the center fell in and I was running short on time for it to cool and such. I ended up just making some pink frosting for it and told everyone that I let Kilynn decorate it:)

She had a hard time getting the hang of opening presents. I thought she'd be better at it this year, but she did the same thing as last year. She opened the first present and that was enough. It was a book and all she wanted to do was read it. All present opening came to an early halt until she had finished turning every page and looking at every picture in the book. Actually, we forced her to open her other presents since we had company over, but that's how it would have been with every present if we weren't coaxing her all the way to open the next one. She got a little better by the end and should be all practiced up for Christmas now. We'll see.

The King kids with bows from presents in their hair.

I got this umbrella for Kilynn, because everytime we are out in the rain (which is a lot these days), she keeps saying, "Need Umbrella!" I think this is interesting because we never use umbrellas so I don't know how she knows she needs one if she's out in the rain. She's excited about it, but now the weather forecast shows sunshine all week. We haven't seen anything but rain all month. Now that we found an umbrella to use in the rain, we can't find any rain! ...I'm not complaining!

That was the birthday festivities. Now let me talk about Kilynn!

We love our Kilynn! She gets cuter every day and sometimes it's so hard to resist the urge to squeeze her or eat her up! She suddenly acted older today in church which was nice, but felt very strange at the same time. She actually sat beside us on the bench through all of sacrament meeting! She had her snacks and a few toys to keep her busy, but those things have never before made her quiet during sacrament meeting. She is usually sooo loud and wild! Today though, she sat quietly beside me. Whenever there was a prayer she would immediately fold her arms, close her eyes, and bow her head way down for the entire prayer! I was shocked! Toward the end of the meeting there were two kids in front of us that were trying to get her attention and play with her. They were kneeling on the benches and hanging over the back trying to get to Kilynn. I was worried this would break the spell and she would get rambunctious with them, but to my surprise she began telling them "No! Sit down!" and she would swat their hands away from her. She continued to sit quietly on the bench! The only time she was loud was when I had to get up to go play the piano for the Primary's special musical number. Kilynn was in the back of the chapel, but I could hear her loud and clear throughout the song yelling, "Mommy Where aaarrrrre Yoooooou?!"

She may have acted older at church today which was nice, but she has also been acting like a two year old the last couple weeks which is sometimes not so nice, but humorous at the same time. She has begun trying to assert herself a little more by bossing us around. Sometimes when I'm talking to Joseph, she'll interrupt and say, "Mommy no talking!" If I start to sing she'll sometimes tell me to stop singing. She'll tell me to stop whatever it is I'm doing just to try to be in charge. The other day during lunch, she started throwing food on the floor. I told her not to, and she said in a sweet voice, "It's alright Mama," and continued to liter the floor. I told her that no it's not alright. Again in a sweet voice she said, "It's OK." I told her it's not ok because she was making a mess on the floor. She then looked at me and got stern. She said, "Mommy it's alright! Stop talking! Be quiet!"

I have a list of things she says that I've been meaning to write down so I guess I'll do it here. Some are recent things and some are older.

-She has a book called "I want to be a Farmer." She loves this book and memorized it pretty quickly. It's about a little boy who lives on a farm and it tells about all the chores and things he and his family do throughout the day. His family raises potatoes, so at the end they sit down to a dinner of, "Pork Chops, Broccoli, and guess what?... Baked Potatoes!" For a long time whenever we'd ask Kilynn what she wanted to eat she'd recite that little line. Now, however, she's shortened it down just to Pork Chops. In fact we just asked her what she wanted for her birthday dinner and she said, "Pork Chops!" Too bad we don't have any.

-Last week she was pretending to talk on the phone, and we noticed that she kept saying, "I'm sorry!" into it. We couldn't figure out why she was doing this and then it finally hit me. I think she says this because every time she plays around with the phone she dials a random number and gets the recording that says, "I'm sorry, the number you have dialed has either been disconnected or..."

-Kilynn is the star of the show whenever we go grocery shopping at Winco. She sees the big letters on the wall that indicate different departments of the store and exclaims, "ABCDs! ABCDs!" and then bursts into singing her ABCs at the top of her lungs. It usually makes us the center of attention, but thankfully it's because she's being cute and not because she's throwing a tantrum or something. She does very well with singing her ABCs, although lately she's been leaving out TUVWX.

-Kilynn is also pretty good at counting. She gets to 20, but skips several of the teens on the way up. For a long time she'd count to 14 perfectly, but then she couldn't go on because she'd have to stop there and say, "14 rabbits!" and then laugh hysterically. I couldn't figure out why she did this for a while, but I finally realized she was remembering a counting book she has that we barely ever read. For the number 14, it shows 14 rabbits.

-About a month ago we were getting ready to go out the door on a Wednesday morning. I could not find my car keys and finally started saying out loud, "I can't find the keys. Where could they be?" Kilynn looked up and said, "In closet." I doubted they were in there, but thought maybe Kilynn had found them and had been playing with them. In that case she might know something I didn't! I opened the closet door and asked her, "Where are the keys?" She came over pointed up to one of my jackets and said, "Orange Jacket." I reached inside the pocket and sure enough, there they were! They were still where I had put them three days earlier on Sunday! Luckily Kilynn took note of it!

She often asks Joseph to be a "Jumping Bean." This is what she means:

She has been asking me to let her be a jumping bean lately when Joseph is at work. I tell her she'll have to wait until Daddy is home to do that. I tell her I'm not as strong and don't have as big of muscles as Daddy does. She points to my elbow and says hopefully, "Mommy big muscles?!" As soon as Joseph walks through the door after work she is squealing to be a jumping bean.

Kilynn is such a sweetheart and such a joy in our lives. I love how excited she is about everything, and I love how her eyes sparkle and dance-really they do! She's our sunshine!