Two Years.

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