Dear Carolyn,
So much has changed in our lives this month, I don’t even know where to begin. You’ve gone from having a full-time stay-at-home-mom to having a small-business-owner mom. Instead of spending our mornings making pancakes in our pajamas, you now eat dry cereal in the car on our way to an all-day playdate at a friends’ house. OK, it’s not quite that bad, but it is stressful on both of us, and all I can say is…I think it will get better.
Despite the stresses of the past few weeks, you’re doing new things every day and being as cute as you can possibly be. The other day you actually started sounding out words! I wrote out several three letter words and you sounded each letter out and tried to squish the letter sounds into their words – you got about half of them right. But the neat thing is that you realize that those letters you love so much make words!
And it’s really, truly official: you are potty trained! You still wear diapers at night and for your very rare occasional nap, but during the day you wear your beloved Dora panties (you’ll deign to wear Blue’s Clues or Elmo if none of the Dora ones are clean.) It’s pretty funny – you’ve maybe watched Dora three times in your whole entire life, but since Dora is on the diapers you used to wear you just had to have Dora panties. And when I asked you what kind of birthday cake you wanted? Dora. (I’m drawing the line on that one. Shortly thereafter you decided you wanted a ladybug cake anyway.)
Your imagination is starting to run away with you. You can take an empty bin (well, first you empty it by dumping all the toys on the floor) and make it into a boat, a car, a house or a rocket – that one involves taking your doll-sized pack & play and putting it on top, because of course the rocket needs to have a top. Mimi is constantly playing with you, but sometimes she’s a baby, sometimes she’s your age, and other times she’s a dog. For that matter, sometimes you’re a dog, and you will only do what I ask you to do if I say, “Puppy dog, could you please _____?”
To celebrate my day off, you turning thirty-four months old, and your upcoming first day of school, we spent today at the outlet mall. Your favorite part? Driving the car with Elmo and Zoe that was outside the Carter’s store. My favorite part? Spending the day with my little girl. I may be a part-time working mom now, but I think that’s made me appreciate the time I am home with you even more.
Love, Mommy