Bunny turns TWO!!!

Bunny turned TWO on Friday the 9th. She's such a big girl! We had a birthday the Sunday prior to her actual birthday with ALL of my huge family over PLUS tons of family and friends. I just wanted to share with you some photos of the whole ordeal in case you're interested :-D

Bunny's currently obsessed with cows, so we borrowed a bunch of cows from a friend who collects them and donned the house with them.

Of course, I made a cow dress for Bunny complete with shrug and bloomers.  I'll share where I found the patterns for those in a different post.

Even her baby doll dressed up like a cow!

I have a large family.  Here is me with all my brother's and sisters and our parents, plus one fiancé and one husband, and Bunny.  I have six siblings altogether.  My parents are going to have ONE FULL HOUSE when the rest of them start pairing up and making babies!

We had a slideshow going with about 50 pictures of Bunny throughout the past year.  Do you know how difficult it is to narrow a slideshow down to 50 pictures when one takes 10,000 easily in one year? 

My sister is a cake decorator, so she made the cake--a cow--and the cupcakes--the cow's pasture.

She did a great job despite the fact that the icing I made for her melted just a bit.

One of my beautiful sisters.

Another with her fiancé

And another...

And another...

My husband's grandmother.

My father--Bunny's Nonno (Italian for Grandpa)

My husband's mother...

My HANDSOME husband.  I just want to eat him up!

His dad...
And yes, there are people missing from these portraits.  I tried to go around and take photos of all the guests but with 32 people crammed into our little ranch home, I missed some.

Bunny's cupcake.

We had to blow the candles out for her.  She didn't quite get it.

I made her this birthday hat.  She likes being a princess lately so I figured I'd make her a birthday hat that could double as dress up.  Don't look too closely, you'll find LOTS of mistakes.  I made this on the fly and would do it much better if I had it to do over again.

She wasn't even interested in her cupcake.  She knew one of her friends had just arrived and was anxious to go play with him.

Ah, the presents.  She doesn't know how blessed she is!

Playing dress up later with her aunts and uncles.

Even Daddy played...

...somewhat willingly...

Me and my two year old! I didn't get in many pictures because I was behind the camera most of the time, but I made a point to get in at least one!

 My little princess playing with her new Hotwheels and a baby doll.  She got a considerable amount of boy toys--for which I was extremely grateful--at her party.  She loves that kind of thing but people don't normally think to give her anything that's not pink!

 On the morning of her actual birthday we gave her a present in our bed first thing when she woke up.  She did not sleep in our bed, but she likes to toddle in there first thing every morning to look for Mommy and to nurse.  Yes, she still nurses :-D.

 "What else in there, Mommy?  Mommy's going to get me another present!"

 She wanted another present at first, but then settled in on loving the duck (all natural rubber from Ecomom.com) when we told her that was it.

 Before I went to work, she dressed us up like princesses.

 I only work three hours on Fridays as opposed to four, so when I got back around 11am, we gave her another present.

 A bilingual book since I'm working hard to teach her Spanish.

 We would have gone to the park but as we were getting rains of flood like proportions, we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and then let her play on the playscape there.

 Family Portrait!

 Then, she and I went home for her nap while Daddy officiated a wedding rehearsal.  After the nap, we braved the rains again to take her to a mall to play on the playscape there--again, since the park wasn't an option.

 She enjoyed the carousel for as long as we had the quarters.

 And then went on the playscape where a little girl kindly helped her get to the big kid places, since she isn't really big enough to do them herself. S

 We said hi to Ronald McDonald.

 And then went home for our private family birthday celebration.  It's so important to me to have that quiet time together as a family to reflect on our daughter.  Mommy and Daddy took turns saying some of our favorite things about Bunny, and then we gave her cake.

 She actually did help me blow the candles this time!

 Then it was time for presents.  By now, she knew the drill.  When I came out with an armful of them, she said, "Oh, thank you, Mommy!"

 She loves munchkins at Dunkin Donuts so I knit her five of them in chocolate, powdered, and glazed, and then sewed a little "paper bag" for them.

 We love Sesame Street so these board books I got at a ridiculous sale price at Ollies were great!

 And I handknit her Telly Monster.  He was TOUGH and didn't QUITE turn out the way I wanted, but she recognized him immediately and that is all that matters!

 A Xylophone from Michaels that had two badly flat notes...

 A Melissa and Doug puzzle from www.buncovereddiapers.com

 A Llama Llama book from the Scholastic book sale at my school.  She has Llama Llama Mad at Mama already and loves it so when she saw this one (Llama Llama Misses Mama) she immediately exclaimed, "Llama Llama!" and then moved on to, "Give me another present."

 A book about Creation that she thumbed through for awhile.

And her biggest present was this Schoolhouse that I got from Zulily with some of my credits.

 It was her favorite.  She loved it so much, she stopped asking for presents, which was a good thing since we had no more.

 And here I am adjusting my bra, but since it's the only picture of me playing with her and her new toys, it has to stay.

Daddy is planning on making her a loft bed about 3 feet high with a ladder up and a slide down. But we just ran out of time to make it for her before her birthday.  So, that would have been her last present.  But it's being pushed back to Christmas.  Hopefully he'll be able to pull it off before then! He is VERY talented but also very VERY busy.

 For the first year of Bunny's life, we took weekly progress pictures and I blogged about her developments from the week on my personal blog and accompanied those blogs with the pictures.

 For the second year of her life, we did that monthly. We turned both of those into pretty thick baby/photo books that I printed out and then bound at Staples

 Now, I think we'll do it twice a year.

This was our last of the monthly pictures.  She's grown up SO much! Check out what she used to look like as a newborn: 

...and as a one year old: 

It never ceases to amaze me how fast she grows up.  If I could slow it all down, I would.