Jocie Lola Tinkybell deet birfday twoooooooo

Yup...two years ago I was lying in a hospital bed with a tiny little bundle snuggled up to me wondering what had just happened in the past 48 hours. It all seemed surreal! Two days before it had just been me and Alex. And a few hours before that all changed when that little voice (loudly) announced her arrival.


And sometimes it still seems surreal, but it's not. It's very, very real. That little bundle was very real!

She changed our lives completely. When we do things, what we do, and how we do them are all influenced by her. And she's worth it!

The last two years have been wonderful, educational and full of awe-inspiring, love-filled, crazy times. We've laughed, cried, and pulled our hair out.

We've lamented the lack of sleep and how quickly she grows and changes.


We've changed how we relate to each other, to our families, to our friends, to our jobs, and to the world.

But we love it. And undeniably we love her. Change is good. Jocie is good.

The first year was crazy - we were all learning. Some of us needed to learn how to adjust to less sleep, to low energy levels, to meals that should take 30 minutes to prepare taking 3 hours to prepare. Some of us needed to learn the difference between night and day and how to properly suck in order to get enough to eat. Those days are a blur. A happy blur for the most part with little reminders in photos and videos and even the occasional real memories!

The second year was crazy for a whole other set of reasons - some of us needed to learn how to spend the whole day without mom and dad and needed to teach our immune systems to be strong. Some of us went back to work part-time then full-time and needed to figure out how to have a (kind of) tidy home and get dinner on the table in 3.2 seconds flat.

But we did it...and now we're into year three and in two weeks or so (again with the start of the new school year) we will be making all kinds of changes...and there will be more learning. But maybe it won't be as hard this year because we already worked out some of the kinks (like getting dinner on the table in 3.2 seconds...most nights).

But here is our little lovely Jocie just a few days ago, fresh out of bed, with crazy hair.

• She has more than one verb (deet)
• She makes simple sentences - she really, truly said "I have a fishy cracker" just like that and with words that even a stranger would recognize two nights ago. If you don't have kids, you won't necessarily realize what a huge milestone that is!
• She can identify most colours...including strange ones like grey
• She can spell her name (I know, right?) and she knows most of the letters in the alphabet...walking through a parking lot takes FOREVER!
  
• She sleeps through the night most nights! YAY! (Now Mommy just needs to start going to be a bit earlier and maybe the two years of sleep deprivation will start to dissolve and become a distant memory)
• She wants to help everyone get better and kiss all their owies away for them
• She loves books and colouring and slides and puppies

My baby is a big girl now!