Written on 4/13/12. Posted on 7/27/12.
Baby girl,
Happy Friday the 13th! You're 21 months today, and looking (and sounding) ever more like a two year old.
Right after my last post, you started to recognize the letter M, which to my delight - means you can now spell your name if we ask you each letter in that order! You have started to chime in a little with songs, and 3 word phrases are so last month. You've even started to command us with things like "Coat Off!" when you want us to stay with you. When we forgot a washcloth for the tub, you came running back, opened a drawer, searched for the yellow wash cloth, found it and ran back to your daddy in the bathroom. It made my heart grow two times in size.
You're so very physical with everything you do - your personality (and your accident-prone nature) seems to take after your daddy. You're growing in front of our eyes; I remember the first time I saw you navigate the toddler slide on your own. You're getting so big! You're bumped and bruised and scraped almost every day now from that rough and tumble life style - but you're also still very gentle with your brother. This morning after your hand got squeezed in your crib bars you took it out surprised and I saw you give your arm a kiss to make it feel better. It was unbelievably cute.
At school, you love your arts and crafts, and get along nicely with all the kids now. Your teacher is always writing us of how much you helped her, or held another young girls hand when she was trying to walk. You know whose teachers belong to your brother, and you can tell me the other children's names and which parent belongs to which child - even for some who aren't in your class. You like to ask your brother's teachers where the babies are, and where he is if you see them in the hallway. You're just so good with him.
You don't mind me feeding your brother anymore, and explain to me that the bottles in the fridge are milk for him. You laugh hilariously when you see him being fed solids (and as he spits them out), and you're always helping me get toys for him (even if they aren't always the best size).
You and I have gone to swim classes for the past month at the YMCA, and you LOVE it. The classes are 30 minutes every Saturday morning for 8 weeks - and I have to say its some of my favorite time of the week. I love seeing you have so much fun, listen, explore and learn. The ladies at the pool call you "the bathing beauty". You do all the gestures with the "if you're happy and you know it", "wheels on the bus", "humpty dumpty" and "goodbye - never swim alone" songs - and are really good at getting yourself out of the pool. You don't like to swim on your back yet; that's just something we'll have to work on this summer!
All in all, you're just a very impressive little girl. You're social, physical, artistic, and though we're a little biased, we can see how beautiful and intelligent you are now and how even more amazingly beautiful and intelligent you'll be when you're older.
Squeezes and smooches,
Mama
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