this is my two-year old

Dear Huntleigh,

Oh my little bird. You are now twenty-eight months going on eleventeen. I look at you next to Lucy and see how you became my big girl in just a short blink of my eyes. At the end of my pregnancy I spent some months mourning that you would no longer be our only child, and now that Lucy is here, I see that her presence makes you even all the more amazing and wonderful. You have welcomed Lucy into your home with such love and openness of heart that sometimes I am wowed by your maturity. This doesn't mean that I trust you alone in a room with her just yet, especially when I walk out for a mere moment and come back in to find you smothering her in the baby papazan. I know this is a lovingly innocent smothering and I appreciate that. You begin almost every day by telling me, "Mommy, baby U-cy is so cute." You already don't remember life without her and someday soon, you'll discover that she'll have become your best friend.

You were playing playdoh the other day and making quite a mess of it. I found myself growing very frustrated with all the playdoh on the floor and as I was cleaning it up, I kept sighing. You could sense my disapproval and said, "Mommy, please kiss me." So I stopped sweeping and kissed you on your sweet pink lips and then you said, "Rub your nose on my nose." Your nose was runny, but we rubbed noses anyways, and when you felt my approval return, you said, "I got boogers on you!" and we laughed and laughed. It was exactly what I needed and I think that somehow, you knew it. I realized, yet again, that I often have very high expectations of you and for that, I am sorry. Mommy is learning alongside you and I need to exercise more grace with you. I think this may be something that you and I will struggle with much throughout your life because you are my firstborn daughter and I will want to perfect all of my imperfections through you. For this, I will probably need to ask your forgiveness time and again and I can only hope that this will make our relationship stronger instead of making it suffer.

You love the story of Jonah and the Big Fish, as your children's Bible entitles it. You can pretty much recite the whole story with us and you love to make the big "Gulp" noise when the fish swallows Jonah and the "Puh-tooy" noise when the fish spits Jonah onto the beach. Last week you were willing to let us vary the Bible story, so we read about Daniel in the Lions' Den and you told us that the lions didn't eat Daniel because "they like strawberries." Daddy replied with, "Yeah...and hamburgers," but I found this a very interesting theological perspective on Daniel, seeing as I had never considered the lions to be vegetarian.

You are very particular, needing all the foil on the top of your yogurt cup to be peeled off (I don't blame you) and telling us "I don't yike this song" when you want us to skip to the next track or "I yike this song" when we've skipped the tracks we don't like. You can sing almost all the words to the Alphabet of Nations song, which I find to be impressive, seeing as you really don't know what you are singing about...."Qatar, Russia, Suriname, Turkey, Uruguay, Vietnam." You love the Veggie Tales song: "Baro-me, Cere-me, Gotta be, beggie tale" is your rendition of the more accurately pronounced, "Broccoli, Celery, Gotta be, Veggie Tales." I ask you to sing it when I want a really good laugh and I think it is funny every time. You can count to eleventeen, and then some. You recognize quite a few letters: A, E, H, L, M, N, O, Q, T, V, W, and X. You love to sing Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and the Alphabet. But my favorite is when I hear you singing Jesus Loves Me to Lucy.

Togetherness is a big theme for you. When Daddy is around, you really like to do things, "All to-geh-her." This now includes baby Lucy. I hope your desire for togetherness never really goes away.

I love you so much.

Mommy