I fully acknowledge that I have been slacking in my fatherly blogging duties in not writing your letter over the past 5 days, but it seems like every spare moment lately has been spent working on our new deck, which you love, by the way.
So...wow. This month has been absolutely amazing. I'm having trouble deciding where to start. I guess we'll start with Christmas. This, I think, will be the first Christmas you remember. It's certainly this first Christmas that you "got it." You got that Santa was bringing your presents, you got that something special was happening. You helped us decorate our Christmas tree, and you were very intrigued with all of the Christmas lights that were up. Everywhere we drove, when you saw some you'd say, "Ooooh...Kiss-miss yights!" You raked in at Christmas again this year, and loved opening all of your presents. You finally understood that the purpose of ripping off wrapping paper was to get to the present underneath, rather than to play with the wrapping paper.
Nana and Dodd have been here for over a month now, and you absolutely love having them around. We see them almost every day, and I don't know what you're going to do when they go back to Illinois in a couple of months. I don't know what we're going to do. Nana has been instrumental in getting you to eat things that stubborn two year olds don't want to eat, and they've both been really great about helping us with picking you up and entertaining you.
You are such a smart little girl. I can't believe that you already know all of your letters by sight. A couple of months ago, you started spelling things out of the blue. We were in the mall one day, and there was a sign that said "WOW," and you looked at it and said, "Dada! W, O, and more W!" This past month, you've been spelling everything you see. When we get you out of the bath, you spell what's on our shirts - "B-R-O-O-K-L-Y-N!" You spell what's on the cups we drink out of, and you spell out signs on buildings. You love showing off your spelling abilities. You've also started to get the idea behind counting. You've been able to say your numbers up to 10 for a few months now, but you never really knew how to count things. This month, since we've been potty training, we've been having you count the M & M's we give you when you pee in the potty (I know, bad parent for rewarding peeing with candy...but it works). You still get your counting off sometimes, but a lot of the times, you will be able to tell us exactly how many "M's" there are on the counter.
Speaking of potty training, we had a breakthrough about a week ago. We've been trying for months to get you to tell us when you had to go and you never would. Then one day, we started taking you to the potty, and every time you had a dry diaper, we'd add in some M & M's and tell you that you were getting extra for the dry diaper. A couple of days later, you started saying things like, "I don't want to go pee pee in mine diaper," and a day or so after that, you came right up to me and said, "Dada, I need to go make water tinkle." I about fell out of my chair. You've gone a couple of weeks now with very few accidents, but we're still working on the other end. You still don't like to go poop on the potty, but I have a feeling it won't be long.
In addition to your letters, you're trying new words out. Or, rather, new versions of words that you already know. You get past tense now, but still don't know quite how to put things in past tense. The funniest version of this has been when you're trying to ask about something one of us did. It comes out, "Dada, what you do'd?" You also still have trouble with "my" and "mine," because it always comes out something like "where mine shoes go?"
Finally, you discovered your first favorite movie this past month. One day, we decided to put on "Cars" and it was love at first rev. For a week after that, the only things we heard from you was, "I want to watch Co-ars!" "Is dat Yightning Ma-Queen? Is he very nice? Where is Sally? Where is Flo? Is dat Mat-o?" and of course, "Ka-CHOW!" In fact, you were riding your tricycle around (you finally learned to ride it without a push from us - thanks, Nana!) last week saying, "I'm Sally! Call me Sally!" and when you'd ride backward, you'd insist on us calling you Mater.
As always, we can't wait to see what this next month brings. We love you very much.
Love,
Dada
