Dear Carolyn,
Today you are two years old. I can’t believe what a big girl you are! I kissed you goodnight last night knowing it was the last kiss I’d give you as a one-year-old, and it made my breath catch a little.
In the past year you’ve learned so much. You’ve learned to talk, and you say the funniest things! You can run and jump, pull your pants up and unzip your footie pajamas. You draw circles and dots and straight lines, and would spend the whole day coloring and painting if you could. You know your alphabet, and can read all the capital letters, some lowercase letters, and single digit numbers. You can almost count to 20 (you get all the way up to 12, but then it gets a little sketchy: “12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20!”)
You’re starting to master pronouns, although you do mix them up sometimes, but most of the time now you refer to yourself as “I” instead of “Carrie”. When I ask you if you need a diaper change, you proclaim “I are dry!” You’ve started using the phrases “yes, I see that” and “nice shoes” (or coat, buttons, sticker, etc.) The other night we were headed upstairs to take a bath with the new bath crayons you got at your birthday party, and you picked up your toy phone and said “Hello? Yeah, I taking bath with crayons, bye!” One night at dinner you started squeezing your food and calling it “kind of squeaky”. We figured out that you meant “kind of squishy”. It’s sooooo hard not to laugh when you do things like that (which would just encourage you, of course!)
We’ve very much entered the verbal two-year-old land, where every single minute you come up with something funny and endearing to say. I could carry a notebook around just to write them all down in and I still would never be able to catch them all.
Even though you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, you love to sing. You know all the words to a lot of songs now, including “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Old MacDonald”, “Rubber Ducky”, “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes”, “Twinkle, Twinkle”, “Baa, Baa Black Sheep”, “Rock-a-bye Baby”, and (of course) “Happy Birthday”. You also think you know all the words to “La La La La Lemon”, “Sing” (from Sesame Street), and several others. You now could be across the house completely engrossed in something else and if I sit down at the piano you come running over and start sobbing about how it’s “mine turn!” You love to sit on the bench, plunk out notes, and sing a song. Don’t worry, I have a bunch of that on video already.
I’m so proud of how nice your manners are. You say “please”, “thank you” and “you’re welcome” mostly without prompting. You say “bless you” when someone sneezes and “excuse me” when you burp. You’re slowly learning to share your toys and take turns with your friends. Yesterday we went out for lunch, just the two of us, and I was pleasantly surprised by how nicely you sat next to me in the booth and how neatly you ate. You even shared your hot fudge sundae with me without complaint!
Mostly, I just want to tell you that the past two years of being your mama have been the most wonderful two years of my life. I have loved watching you grow, seeing you learn new things every day, and experiencing the wonder of ordinary things through your eyes. When I look back at your pictures and the stories I’ve written about you from the past two years, I am reminded again how precious, how fleeting, this time is. Soon enough you will be the mama writing letters to your daughter, and I will have to think back to your tiny voice saying “Thanks, Mom!” to remember how little you once were.
Love, Mommy
