I can’t believe you are already two years old.
It’s hard to even wrap my mind around the fact that two
years and a day ago I wasn’t a parent. I
wasn’t who I am today. So many changes
have happened in our lives in what seems like such a short amount of time. Recently I found this snippet, and while it
doesn’t all apply to ‘us’, most of it does, and it always warms my heart to
read it:
I felt you. You were a pea. Then a lemon. Then an eggplant. I followed advice. I read twelve books. I quit coffee. Could you tell I was scared? I talked to you, sang to you... I wasn't ready. But then you were here. Ten toes. Eight pounds. Love. Big fat love. I held you. I fed you. I realized that I would spend my life doing things to make you happy -- and that that would make me happy. And then there are the times I want to give up. You've made me rethink my sanity. You've made me want to fall on my mother's feet and tell her that I get it. But then you smile and you say my name -- and you grab my hand with those little fingers. We're growing together. We are seeing the world like it's new. I will open my heart and love will rain down all over you. You'll giggle, and I'll do it all over again. And we will walk hand in hand. Until you let go. I made you, but you made me a mother."- Unknown
I feel like you have grown up so much since the last time I
wrote. Some things are still the
same. You still love your sister with
all your heart. Even when she has your
toys, she is your favorite person in the entire world. You two share these magical giggles that is
almost like your own secret little language.
No one can make either of you laugh as hard, or genuinely as each
other. I love it. You love taking care of your sister too. If she has fallen asleep on the floor, you
will put a blanket, or anything close to resembling one, over her. If you find her binky, regardless if she
needs it or not, you will bring it to her, and try to give it to her. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn’t. If she is crying, and you can
see that I am stressing over it, you will try to comfort her. Throughout the day, you give her more hugs
and kisses than your father and I get on any given day in the week.
Size wise, you don’t seem much different to me, but
according to your doctor, you have grown, so I guess I have to believe
them. You are still very petite and
slender. You and your sister are about
the same weight. You have dirty blonde
hair that is getting longer—another thing I don’t notice really, until I look
at pictures of you a year, or a month ago, and wonder when it all grew to be so
long. The ends have started to curl up,
and leave you with precious little ringlets.
I love them. I fear that they
won’t last much longer than your “baby” stage in life, but I can hope. Your hair, much like you, is a force to be
reckoned with. You hate it being
brushed, and you hate it being put up into any sort of pony tail, but you also
hate it being in your eyes, and you are always brushing it away. Your hands are always in your hair, and your
hair is always a mess. There isn’t much
I can do about it, so I just let it go for now.
Your eyes are still big and beautiful, but they are changing. They are no longer blue. There are starting to be little flecks of
some other color. I can’t quite tell if
it is green or brown, and only time will tell.
You have (mostly) graduated from your highchair when we go
out to eat. For a few short months, you
allowed us to use a booster seat with you, but now you refuse. You don’t care if sitting in a regular chair
means that your nose can barely rest on the table top, you want to be a big
girl! Most the time you stay seated, and
are pretty well behaved. You’re still
trying to master eating with silverware, so it’s still a mess, but even a
highchair couldn’t fix that.
The places that we frequent for dinner often always remember
you. When we go to Chili’s we have a
waitress that we request every time. She
has literally watched you grow up. She is
one of the reasons that you started to finally chill out at night when you were
a few months old because she suggested a remedy that seemed to work. You sometimes get toted around the
restaurant, and sometimes taken near the kitchen, so you can be shown off. You love the attention. Another place we go, Daddy always takes you
to the counter to pay. You stand on his
knee, and hand them the bill and credit card.
Once the receipt is printed, Daddy fills it out, and then you sign it,
and hand it back to them. When we leave,
you say (scream) goodbye to everyone and wave.
We didn’t know that they even remembered you until we were getting ready
to leave, and overheard one of them say, “Watch this, this little girl pays the
bill every time, it’s so cute!” Everyone loves you.
You are tough as nails.
You fall down, you get back up and brush it off, if you can even be
bothered to do that much, and just keep on going. You only really cry when you don’t get
something you want, or you get in trouble.
Usually a lot of high-pitched screaming is also involved. No one likes that. Unfortunately, you seem to have inhabited
your parent’s klutziness. I’m hoping
that a lot of it is still you getting to know your body. You love to run, and dance, and jump. Well, kind of jump. It’s more of a hop if you’re on your own, or
you really nail it when you get to hold on to something. You love to be thrown around, and rough house
with us. You love to go to the park, and
climb on all the equipment, but you seem very hesitant to go down the
slides. You love the swings though. When you see them all we hear is shrill
screams of joy, “Wings! Wings!”
Your vocabulary has expanded a lot. You can now form sentences, and sing
songs. I could go on for hours with all
the cute things you say now. It seems
like writing them out, loses a lot of the cute though because I just can’t get
the same effect of when the words actually come out of your mouth. You have turned out to be amazingly polite
and giving. You know ‘thank you’, and
‘you’re welcome’, and sometimes you even say ‘please’. We’re still working on ‘you’re welcome’ a
little bit because sometimes you say it before you say ‘thank you’, when you’re
not the person that is supposed to be saying it, or you say, ‘I ‘melcome.’ If someone sneezes (or coughs, or makes any
noise, really) you always say ‘bless you!’
Sometimes you will even check to see if they are ok. Such a sweet girl.
We recently started taking you to baby story time at the
library. You love it. It is only half an hour, but a few stories
are read, and songs are sung.
Afterwards, you get to color and play with sensory items. You aren’t super social yet, but you really
seem to enjoy it, even if we don’t know any of the songs, or the people there.
Today we had your birthday party. It wasn’t anything big, just a few friends,
and a few family members. You wanted
Tinker Bell, so that was the theme. I
worked for a few days to make you Tinker Bell, and you loved it. I made you a little green dress, and very
glittery tutu that you strutted around in.
There was glitter everywhere. You
were the most perfect little birthday princess.
I think really enjoyed yourself this year. You were so sweet when opening your
presents. Most were in gift bags, so you
would take out the tissue paper, and hand a piece to everyone around, telling
them “thank you” every time you did. It
took you forever to open your presents, because every time you took one thing
out of the bag, that was it, you wanted to play with that thing right then, but
there were more presents, so we had to keep taking things away from you, and
show you that there were more! We did
cupcakes this year, instead of a cake for you.
I think that was better. It was a
lot less messy, but you still ended up in the bathtub after. We had been practicing singing ‘Happy
Birthday’ for a week or two before your birthday, but you seemed unfazed when
it was sang to you. When we went to
dinner, a while later, we had them sing to you then, too, and you didn’t seem
to enjoy it then either… but you still love singing the song.
I love you my messy-haired little girl. I can’t wait to see where the next year
brings us.
Love,
Momma
