21 and 22 Months

Dear Silvie,

Here are some things I love about you right now:

-Tonight we were driving in the car and I was listening to NPR.  The commentator was talking about how Barack Obama is carefully preparing for the State of the Union address tomorrow night.  From the back seat I hear a cheerful, “B’ock O’mama!!!  Yayyy!”  Ummm, we may have practiced saying that a few times in the past but this was the first spontaneous political act from you.  I love you, kid.

-For the last two months you’ve worn red, rubber rainboots and only red, rubber rainboots.  Fortunately, that’s a pretty good choice given the weather here in Stumptown so it’s worked for you.  You refused to even let me try other shoes on you.  Until today.  Today you chose the most hideous sparkly pink pair of “dancing shoes” in the shoe basket and wore them out to dinner.  You even did a little tap dance routine on our front porch.  I was prepared to hit the pink sparkly age around four, but certainly not before your second birthday.  Guess I was wrong.

-You are obsessed with identifying every living creature as a “mama”, “papa” or “baby”.  For example, if you see a picture of two cows, you point and say “mama cow, baby cow”.  If you see three of anything, they are automatically mama, papa and baby.  If you see an obvious male, it is a “papa”.  Today you even named the bike store we drive past as “mama bike”.

-You have an intense love/hate relationship with our little housemate, Mae.  You say “Mae ‘ome?  Cawa ‘ome?” every afternoon as we drive home from work.  If they are not home, you are very sad.  And when they come home, you exclaim, “Mae Cawa ‘ome!”  Mae is only a few months younger than you and she looks up to you and wants to be exactly like you and wants whatever toy you are playing with.  She also wants to get right next to you in your personal space.  Your initial reaction is to shriek and shove her out of your space.  Sigh.  We have worked a lot on sharing and using your words.  In the last week though, I have seen you turn to Mae and give her a hug instead of shoving her away.  I’ve also seen each of you rush to the other’s rescue when one falls and cries.  You try to help each other up.  Usually this is not actually helpful since you grab on and won’t let go, but it’s nice to see that you care about each other.

-Miss Naomi informs me that you are very motivated by food right now.  Each morning around 10:00 you announce to her that it is time for “‘nack!” and she says, “Silvie, you can have your snack after you pick up the toys.”  She says you zoom around the living room putting all the toys away in no time flat so you can have your ‘nack.

-You love “meat”.  You eat lunch meat (thin sliced turkey breast, ham, Canadian bacon and the like) with gusto.  You also have an unabated love affair with cookies.  Over Christmas break you woke me up one morning at 5:30 a.m. demanding a cookie.  Usually we keep fig newton breakfast bars on hand to feed you.  Unfortunately, that day we were out and you had a total meltdown at 5:30 a.m. for your cookie.  Sigh.

-You’ve started singing quite a bit.  I can recognize “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and “Rockabye Baby”.  Generally you launch into “Rockabye Baby” right after we talk about B’0ck O’mama. (Barackabye Baby!)

Love,

Your Mama