Her special skill is in opening bags, undoing zippers and turning out boxes. You can not leave a purse, backpack, grocery bag, or really anything you want kept together within her reach. She loves to find out what’s inside and I think her favorite birthday treat was being encouraged to open boxes and spill the contents out.

Her laughter fills the house and more than the other girls she loves to sing. Her speech is still coming–shes working so hard on words that just aren’t quite there yet–but man she makes up for that with singing. She’ll bop around the house humming or singing snatches of songs from our Music Together classes. At times, she tries to use song to communicate with endearing results. Of course, after starting our preschool activities she loves to sing the ABC song and is starting to recognize some letters.

Stella’s tantrums are epic. The screams. The tears. The kicking of strong little legs. The spitting. The hitting. And the calm after the storm accompanied by her wonderful hugs complete with back pats from her little girl hands.

And the best times are when we’re walking and she slips her little girl hand into mine. I can feel her strength and her fragility in her soft, warm embrace. I can not believe that in two years she’s grown from a teeny-tiny infant smaller than my forearm to a solid child. she is her own person. Stronger in many ways than we give her credit for. I am blessed with her as a little daughter and I can not wait to see what the rest of her “terrible two’s” will bring.

Stella does her best Snoopy impersonation

NIKON D200, ISO 800, ƒ/2.8, 1/30sec, 70mm focal L.

Peek-a-boo

NIKON D70, ISO 640, ƒ/2.8, 1/30sec, 50mm focal L.

And she’ll wait for you to ask, “where’d Stella go?”

Where’d Stella Go?

NIKON D70, ISO 640, ƒ/2.8, 1/30sec, 50mm focal L.

And, the predictable response she gets after opening her hands starts of a fit of giggling that makes it easy to keep the game going for as long as she wants to play.

There she is!

NIKON D70, ISO 640, ƒ/2.8, 1/30sec, 50mm focal L.

And, for the record, it wasn’t that I didn’t try to get equivalent shots of both Elise and Maia (because I really *did* try), but, they were just so busy doing their own things that they wouldn’t stand still and be adorable when I had the lens trained on them.

Yeah, I’m cute

NIKON D70, ISO 200, ƒ/4.5, 1/400sec, 56mm focal L., map

All smiles — Stella seams to have taken lessons from Elise.

NIKON D70, ISO 320, ƒ/6.3, 1/400sec, 48mm focal L., map

Stella says “Hello!”

NIKON D70, ISO 200, ƒ/4.5, 1/250sec, 27mm focal L., map

Happy pumpkin

NIKON D70, ISO 200, ƒ/4.5, 1/125sec, 62mm focal L., map

This is probably my favorite picture. Perhaps it’s my own projection of her actual sentiment, but, I can’t help but think she’d sure like to play with that big orange ball. If only it weren’t so darned immovable…

Little help please? It’s too heavy to move by myself.

NIKON D70, ISO 200, ƒ/4.5, 1/160sec, 40mm focal L., map

It was a beautiful day for it. Sunshine, cool breeze, temperate weather. The time was right…after lunch so it was very quiet. The girls had a fantastic time. Elise and Stella both loved the swings. Elsie has been loving them, but this is a new development for Stella. Stella spent the entire time laughing her perfect baby laugh, laughing to the point where she gave herself the hiccups…which only made her laugh  louder.

After swings we went to the small child play area with a large sandy area that is partially shaded. There is a small climbing structure with a “Maia sized house” and slide. Maia loves the play structure and Stella and Elise enjoyed the sand, both giving a shovel a try. They then scooped sand and, wonder of wonders, put it into their small buckets and not into their mouths. Yay!

Then it was teeter-totter time. This teeter-totter is really a cantilever type beam with a spring in the middle, so it bounces as opposed to moving the kids up and down in the air. Better for little ones. Elise loves to pull herself up by the seats and make the whole thing bounce and once she realized she could sit on the seat and bounce big time I had a hard time convincing her to do anything else. At one point she even tried to throw her little leg over the saddle herself, but the seat is still a bit high for her.

Stella also enjoyed the bouncy teeter-totter, but not as much as she enjoyed the sand area and flirting with the other moms and grandmas. Stella was holding court with her bucket and shovel. She’d do peek-a-boo and then smile and look away and then laugh as the other women coo’d at her. She was just too cute, and we almost lost her to the grandma who just wanted to take her home.

There were tears all around when we had to head out. I’m thinking that’s a good thing, in a way, because all the girls had such a good time playing.

But after thinking about Stella and her general physical milestone attainment, John and I thought it best to wait it out. Stella is on her own schedule. She loves to be held, picked up, and is not very motivated to try new things unless she initiates it. We find she does hit gross motor milestones about a month to six weeks after Elise does. And when she hits them she masters them fairly quickly.

So the other morning when Stella was just yelling her head off and we went to her room to investigate we shouldn’t have been surprised to see her standing in her crib complaining she couldn’t get down. That’s so Stella.

And yesterday she pulled right up on our friends ottoman and just beamed with pride. And this morning she finally took to the kitchen step stool I keep out just so the girls can play on it, grabbing hold and lifting herself on to her feet with no fuss. Until she tried to get down and just, you know, let go. The dismount learning will be quicker than the pull-up learning was, I imagine.

Welcome to the vertical world Stella dear. We are so glad to see you.

This morning as I pulled a happy Stella from her crib she looked at me, went “muah” and hit me with a big lip-smacking-wet-baby-mouth kiss. Swoon. I love that happy girl.

Also. She might be a greyhound and not a racehorse. She loves to pick up toys, flotsam, jetsam, anything, put it in her mouth and crawl away. Keep the rabbits away from this one!

I think wearing her helmet had gotten her used to a certain level of recklessness concerning her head whick she will have to unlearn, quickly, now that her head is no longer protected by a hard plastic shell.

I also think her less top-heavy self is going to lead to her beginning a traditional crawl fairly soon.

What she really needs to do is figure out that she can, indeed, move from a sitting position to a crawling position–or any floor position–on her own. I’m pretty sure she was “stuck” in bed last night for an hour or so after she somehow managed to sit up in bed and couldn’t figure out how to get down again.

But oh glory! Now, both her little teeth are visible. I really hope the teeth just come in smooth sailing after these two otherwise, I might not make to #20.