23 months old!

Emily,

I've been reminded this month of just how blessed I am to be your mother.  It's been an emotional past couple of weeks, but your smiles, your giggles, and just your physical presence in my life have been such a joy!  You're catching on to things so quickly these days.  Just today you learned the word "snow" and apparently told it to daddy when you went outside today after we got our first blanket of snow over everything.  You can also count to ten - albeit you often skip numbers - but your eight, nine, and ten are always right on!  And, I woke up the other day to you singing part of the alphabet to yourself.  I haven't been able to get you to repeat a whole string of letters yet, but if I sing it and pause, you'll supply the right letter most times (especially if it's H, P, or S).  And just tonight in the car, we had a whole conversation.  I told you we were going to see Andy and Sarah, and you said, "Ahn-dy, Sa-wah, house".  And then I confirmed this and you said, "door?  knock" and I said yes, we could knock on their door and then you said "night night.  Baby Abby go night night", and I said, "sure, yeah, she goes night night".  What a little chatterbox!

You LOVE playing with your baby, and making sure she has her bottle, and that she gets rocked to sleep.  If we sing "rock-a-bye baby" though, you'll throw her vehemently down on the floor when we sing "down will come baby".  We'll have to work on that.  You also really like to color, though mostly you just dot the paper with the tips of the crayons and ask me to draw various things that come to your mind.  I draw a lot of animals and babies and shoes.

You're learning to reason, and if I tell you that you need to eat three bites of (insert healthy food here) before you can eat a cracker, you'll usually do it.  You also generally listen really well, and are (excluding that recent trip to the Gap with your soon-to-be aunt Kara) very well behaved.  You do, however, still whine a LOT.  And this is unfortunate, because I can't really punish you for it, but I can't stand to listen to it either.  It's easy to fix though, because 9 times out of 10, you just want my undivided attention.  And I can usually give you that.

We decorated the Christmas tree last weekend, and you loved it.  You like all the "balls" hanging on the tree, and you like to show it to everyone that comes over how pretty the tree is.  You've enjoyed playing with your Little People nativity scene, but we've lost baby Jesus, and that could present a problem in your theology soon.  Mary?  Check.  Angel?  Check.  Jesus?  Who's that?

Thanks for lighting up my life, little girl.  I can't believe that in another month, my baby will be two whole years old!

Love,

Mommy