23 Months

Dear Silvie,

I have to say that January and early February were pretty tough because you got a whole string of cold viruses and were miserable most of the time.  Now that you are feeling better you are much more pleasant to deal with and you are growing by leaps and bounds.  Your 2T shirts are already too short.  You outgrew some of your pants, and you are stringing words together into semi-intelligible sentences.

The other day we had a rare (and unnecessary) snow day off.  This was the first snow in your memory and you were thrilled.  You were outside making a snowman with your Papa by 7:30 a.m.  Good thing too, since the snow melted by noon.  Anyhow, you very clearly were upset when you came to me and said, “Mama, my mitten fall off!”

You are working so hard to establish your own independence in multiple ways.  You undress yourself nearly every evening when we get home from work, just because you can.  We had to draw the line at taking your diaper off without permission after cleaning up one too many accidents.  At the dinner table tonight you were not so enchanted with the main course, so I offered you a choice of yogurt or an orange for dessert.  You stated, “Orange, peel it all by myself!”  While half the sounds are still missing from these words, the meaning was abundantly clear. You want to do it yourself!

And you did manage to peel it most of the way until some citric acid got into a hang nail on your little finger and you were overwhelmed by pain and suffering and had to have a complete meltdown to express your distress.  Your negative emotions are expressed just as intensely as your positive emotions.

Miss Naomi, the Super Sitter, reports that you are an excellent mama to the baby dolls at her house.  You feed them and wrap them up in blankets.  You now have three baby dolls at home–two larger dolls and a smaller doll.  You insist on having “Mama Baby, Papa Baby and Baby Baby” in the crib with you when you go to bed at night.

Every night I pray that you will grow up to be a woman who is strong and wise and true.  And I pray that I’ll be strong and wise and true in my parenting of you.

Love,

Your Mama