She's almost TWO!

Ainsley is twenty-one months old, and a blue-eyed blundle of joy! I went to Houston this past weekend and I couldn't keep up with all the funny things she said and did. John and Colleen have found a beautiful little playground at a nearby elementary school, and Ainsley was wild with excitement.

Can you see the excitement in her eyes here? She went down the big slide over and over and over. No fear at all. Mommy helped her get on, Daddy stood in the middle, and Mimi was snapping the pictures!

She loved the slide...

and playing in the little "house"....

and driving the "car."

She is fascinated with her body parts, and fixates on her belly button sometimes! When she gets out of the bathtub, her mom sometimes calls her "Nekked Baby!" When I was dressing Saturday morning, she walked in on me, partially dressed, and said, "Nekked Mimi!"

She just got a new Pottery Barn chair with her name on it for tv-watching!

And, what was so interesting on television??

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!! She can name all the characters on this show as well as all of them on Handy Manny, and Sid the Science Kid, other favorites!

This is her best buddy, George (below)---soother of all pains, cuddler at night, and all-around, best bud!

When it is time to go to bed, they tell her, "It's time to go night-night" and she takes her George, her blankie, and she climbs up into her bed (they've taken the side off after she climbed out of it last week!) There is not one peep, and this was five minutes later! It was truly amazing!

You have to know her dad to understand this picture---but he has taught her to vacuum up her own spilled messes, such as spilled dry Cheerios! She also throws away her own trash!

She won't be two until November, but she is talking non-stop and her vocabulary has everyone amazed, even her pediatrician! She is even putting words together to make short sentences. Like, "Take shirt off," "Ainsley's eggs," "Want more cereal," which makes taking care of her challenging and busy! She loves to read her books and we read many of them, with her counting and naming objects. She points to her name and tries to spell it, nailing the "A" and working on the others. One of her funniest words is "hamburger." I wish I had caught it on video. She has a wonderful appetite and eats almost anything put in front of her, including beef jerky that her dad gave her a big piece of. (I have to admit, the piece was a little too big, and when I held my hand out, she spit it out!) She can easily eat three scrambled eggs in the morning for breakfast! They call yogurt, "ice-cream," and she loves it as if it were real Blue Bell...but I may have to intervene on this one soon! It was so much fun to be with her this past weekend. She is changing by the month!