Birthday Girls

'Tis the season for birthdays in the Barrett house. Isla reached the milestone of her first year and Ellie will proudly tell you that she is now four. As you can see, Isla had no problem diving into her cake with gusto. She was also thrilled with her Bobby car, especially the horn!



Along with becoming one comes some other new abilities. She's happily signing away with her own style and flair. Here's "more", which is usually in the context of food, so is largely superceded by "eat". One of her favorite signs recently is "sleep", which she has been doing lots of. Instead of calmly placing her hand on one side of her head and leaning to that side, she just grabs her head with both hands in a classic "Oh no!" look. But we know what she means.

The other thing that goes with turning one is going vertical. Isla is now the pull-up queen -- anything that will hold still for a few seconds is a viable candidate for pulling up on. Fortunately, she's now mastered the art of getting back down, which makes for a bit less frustration.

Ellie is bursting with personality, creativity, and chattiness these days. She wants to know why? and how? about everything. Some of my favorites are in the theological domain, including such things as: "When God makes people, does he have a bunch of eyes and arms and things that he puts together?"; "If God made Adam out of mud, what does he make peach (i.e. Caucasian) people out of?"; and one night around Easter time when I had prayed that God would bring Mummy home safely from her German class, Ellie said, "God will bring Mummy back safely because that's what he does -- he brought Jesus back from the dead!" Sure 'nuff, Ellie.

Bursting with creativity and opinions can also pose challenges. Ellie drew a picture of her birthday cake a few weeks back and then explained to Crystal that this is what she wanted it to look like. It's on a green plate, with pink cake, yellow frosting, and red candles. Hmmm....ok, where to find a green plate? The pink cake was made with a couple of pounds of strawberry puree. It was a definite hit.

I know I'm biased, but I think our two birthday girls are amazingly beautiful.