Clara my love

My darling, 

I was brushing my teeth the other day, getting ready for Everett's impromptu doctors appointment. I came out looking for you and found you here, in the bathroom, on the chair, "reading" my book. I had the chair there since I was trying to get you to go poop on the potty earlier and needed to sit with you to get you to stay on the potty for a bit. (You didn't go and don't like to sit long, but love the thought of a sucker, or candy if you were to make something happen in the short time you stay seated.) The strange thing is, you are taking a huge liking to this book. You love books and love reading, but it fascinates me that you're so intrigued by this book. It's like you know you should be. You don't ruin things so I let you "read" it. You brought it to the kitchen as I was asking you to come get your shoes on and while I got your brother in his car seat and gathered a few more things you "read" it on the kitchen floor for about 15 minutes. That is longer than you tend to any one of your books, you usually attend them for about 5 minutes here and there when reading on your own. You love your brother so much it amazes me. You typically don't pay much attention to him, however, when he gets up from a nap you're so excited for him to join us. You request him to read with us and when you cry in your crib lately you call for him too. When I'm feeding him you come over and stroke his hair, for quite a while with your mini gentle hand. You talk to him and say a few things like, "Brother eating, awe, baby boy (which sounds like bee boy, i love this), then you say sister...love you, miss you, guppies, nunu" and then have nunu kiss his head. This attention happens about once a day, and other times you'll just ask about him, or check on him sleeping (which actually wakes him, you'll say 'shhhh' then get loud), or come down for tummy time and say a quick hello. I'm surprised you're never mad at him for taking so much of my attention, I'm so proud of you for that. HOWEVER, you're showing you need my attention in other negative ways. You're pushing limits, for sure. You've been in your "time out" chair a few times a day. You're kicking while being changed, you outright hit me the other day. Then you say, "Poor mama" and try and fix it. You're very whining a lot. You're asking us to "walk" constantly, then we're chop liver when we're in your presence. You won't ask just one of us anymore, you want us both, mostly when we have company over. We were thinking company would be great since you'll have more attention from others, but you're even more clingy. I think you think we're going to leave you. For two months someone would come and we'd bolt to the hospital, you always did so well with everyone but I think you're still worried. You're getting your molars so that's a HUGE part of the "neediness and misery you're (we're) in. You always nap and sleep well. Not so much! You're crying after I put you down and screaming out, "Mama, Dada, home soon! Brother!" It breaks my heart. You're very anxious. I go in and you crumble wanting to be held. We rock and I sing to you. You snuggle up. You've become good at snuggling. Last night you weren't crying but you tossed and turned from 7 - 9:30. You're a bit of both your father and I both. You toss and turn like him and you fall asleep for five minutes and wake up, WIDE awake like me. You don't have a fever, yet, you do have diarrhea, drooling, I'm sure pain but you're handling it well. Other than sleep and moodiness. Anyway, I went in since you were awake for so long even though you weren't crying, scooped you up to rock you. We started to rock and you snuggled in, then took the time to look at my eyes and said, "Thank you mama." Although you can be a "pest" as dada calls you sometimes, you're the sweetest little lady I know. Hopefully we kick this sleeping thing in the near future. 

Your manners are superb lately. You're constantly saying please and thank you all the time without being asked. When you don't want something you say, "no thank you" now, instead of "NO!" You're still very serious with your "No thank you!" but it's polite. You shoot your hand out when you say "No thank you!" like on Dora when they say, "Swiper no swiping" -- (same motion).

You hate when your hands are dirty or sticky and prefer  us to feed you anything that would cause this. You're venturing out a bit more. If you have anything on your hands you hold them up while consuming things and then say, "Washa hands" after you're done. You notice a mess and say, "mess" if something is all over your tray or if something spills. 

You help clean up sometimes when I ask you. I usually do the cleaning up but I do plan on getting more of your help soon. Especially since Aunt Krissin is here now and gets to it before I do sometimes. I know you're big enough, I just need the time...we're always behind on getting you in bed. Daddy only  has so much time with you after work and by the time you get in from the pool we're way late on dinner and bed. I think once the swim season is over in a few months it'll be perfect timing...maybe expected by your second birthday. 

You love bubbles. I have a bad habit of feeling the need to "teach" you all the time now that our time is "limited". We're together all day but I struggle with the lack of attention I'm able to give you since it was just you and I for so long. Anyway, we were enjoying bubbles yesterday and I noticed that you are learning something even when we're doing "nothing". I was telling you, "look up, behind you, turn around, on your left..." while playing. You're so smart I don't want you to plateau, I want you to be pushed. You are saying part of the alphabet now! Your favorite book is, "Crabby Gabby" your favorite song is, "Baby Beluga" you like to do ring around the rosy, you are always asking someone to "walk" so you have our full attention, you are easily frustrated, you can be patient, you try and problem solve before you get mad. You have high expectations of yourself and when you have a goal in mind and it doesn't work out you get pissed. I think that although this causes you to get flustered now, it'll be a great quality later in life. I like that you push yourself and want to accomplish a task and don't give in when it doesn't go your way. Well, sometimes you throw whatever it is you're working on, but most of the time you come running for, "HELP" as if you're bleeding to death. 

You laugh in the face of danger. It's odd to me. You are very cautious. You wait for us to help you with things that make you nervous. However, you do really risky things, you're a thrill seeker, and very brave, but cautious at the same time. For example, you won't just go jump in the pool, you know that's not safe. But, you don't want dada to help you swim, even though you know you're going to go under, and you start laughing when you're basically drowning. You are scared to go down the slide into the pool, but you want to anyway, and do. You like to be scared out of your mind, you shake when dada scares you but laugh. I have the perfect video of you as a baby that proves you have been this way forever. I'll add it here soon. I scared you with your rattle and it cracked you up. You're probably going to like haunted houses, dada will have to go with you, I do not like being scared one bit. I think you'll like roller coasters since you like it when dada holds you by your heals and swings you around the house at distances that make me very uncomfortable. 

You always have to keep things in your hands, even when swimming and choo-choo-ing on the wall which makes you fall and semi-drown but you refuse to keep your hands free. You love little things, just like your mama does. Tiny things fascinate us both. You will bring something small with you to the store and at one point I thought you might lose it but you don't. 

You're loving make believe play. Lately you're telling all your "friends" (which consist of puzzle piece animals, bubble guppy characters, dolls from your play house, nunu and other stuffed animals, plastic toy animals, etc.) that it's raining out and they need to get to the bus fast before they get wet. It sounds like, "Hurry, hurry, rain coming, bus, fast, cummon guys, fast, umbrella, fast guys follow me..." over and over. You'll have them talk to each other by saying hi and then asking if they can play together, and you're response is always what I say to you when you use your manners, "Sure! Of course!" so you tell them, "A course!" and they trot along and play on your "Bubble City Play Mat" we have. Your figures do a lot of climbing and you tell them, "A careful!" and then another animal or friend will always come save them. You sometimes find them seat belts which are random things/blankets wrapped around them so they, "Stay safe, stay safe!" You like to rock "Nunu" while I rock Everett and we sing "lullaby baby" and you tell me who to sing it to, we sing it to Nunu first always, then brother, then nunu, then brother and you interrupt me when I'm singing for brother to change it back to Nunu.  You love to run and give jump hugs to mama and dada. You back up as far as you can go in the living room and run and jump into our arms. You're reading longer books now and getting into them. It takes the first few times to get you into them. If there is a lot of text I have to get you involved in liking the book by talking about the pictures first, then after doing that a time or two you'll listen to the real story and get very involved in it. After reading books to you about 4 or 5 times you read them to us by telling us the words as we go. 

You play well independently and FINALLY are playing with others well. We had Addison and Ajay over lately and you played! Hopefully you bring that fun to NY with you when we see Elsa next since you have some playing to make up for after ignoring her on her visit. 

Your memory is unbelievable. "Aunt Krissin" is here and gets you all sorts of new fun toys. She got you a shopping cart and groceries recently. There are so many new items in there like re-fried beans, flour, a lemon and I tell you what it is one time and it's in that noggin forever. I told you that the lemon was sour and you told me along with a bitter looking face the next day. Where you learned to get a sour face is beyond me. Your vocabulary is insane, You listen and repeat and make connections that blow my mind. It's so fun watching you learn and teaching you. We're not working more on Spanish since English is going well. You love moods and like to ask me to show you happy, sad, worried, frazzled thanks to a book aunt Tiffy shared with us that we love, "Happy Hippo, Angry Duck." You love to read and read books back to us after a time or two. You pay very close to all of the pictures and can explain what's going on to use just bu looking at the pics. 

You are stubborn. You do listen when we get serious but you make us get serious often lately. You purposefully ignore us when we ask you to "come here" or when you're in trouble and you need to look us in the eye you won't at first. You're finally saying sorry when you make a mistake, that took a while. Since your brother is home you tend to do things you're not supposed to, things you wouldn't do before...touch the computer, my pump, put your food on the floor when you're done since I can't get up while feeding Everett, make noise on purpose when you know he's sleeping...the list goes on. Thankfully this is only about 10% of our day, the rest you're my little angel. 

You're loud. I never knew how loud you were until Everett came along. You are usually screaming everything you're saying. You know when it's time to be quiet and whisper, for a few seconds. 

You entertain yourself well. You love playing with Nunu like he's your baby. You wrap him up, put him in Everett's room in your big girl bed and then come out to the living room, tell us he's "cryin", go get him, bring him into the room with us, rock him, burp him, give him a paci sometimes. You entertain yourself for EVER it seems with variety of small items that you organize and categorize. Sometimes it's hairties, beads, "treasures", cups and containers in which you pour water in and out for hours, anything really. 

You're snuggly and sweet when you want to be. You bless us every time we sneeze. You say please and thank you for EVERYTHING and no thank you very stern when you don't want something. You tell us you love us and show us all day long just how thankful you are for us. When we "hurt" you by doing your hair you say, "Sorry, sorry, sorry" over and over since that's what I used to say to you while "hurting" you. It makes it so hard to do things to you that you don't want done. 

I love all of the qualities you possess. You came out of me with most of them. We've taught you manners and I've probably pushed you into being more of a snuggler that you'd like. You've always been determined, brave, sweet, compassionate, curious, attentive, and silly. I know I'm missing many of your qualities but those are some strong ones. I can't wait to see how you put all of those to use one day. 

There's so much more but I'm going to bed now. I'll write more later, maybe. You're an amazing little girl that couldn't be more loved. You make us so proud every single day. We are so tired trying to keep up with you day in and day out, when we finally put you to bed we relax for 10 seconds before we look at each other and say, "We miss that little bear!" and wish you were with us still. You're our precious little girl and we thank our lucky stars for you!

XOXO,

"mamadada"