Dear Baby,

This week, you turned 23 months old, and there are so many things about who you are right now that I never want to forget. With Little Sister due to arrive at any moment, I find myself savoring every little moment with you even more than usual. You’re so excited to be a big brother, and I love how much you talk about Little Sister and include her in any conversation about our family.

Here are some more things that I find to be absolutely amazing about you right now:

- We’ve always thought you to be a very affectionate child, but you seem to be on a new level of displaying affection lately. Many times, you just come and sit on my lap and hug me or kiss me or hold hands or stroke my hair, and I think to myself that I wish I could freeze the adoring looks on your face for later on when you are a teenager Some of the sentences you say most throughout the day are things like: Mama, cuddle! Mama, hug [Baby}! Mama, hold hands! Mama, kiss!

- You love to have conversations, and you are such a chatterbox! We talk allllllll day long. Sometimes you set the topic and sometimes I do, but you love to talk and discuss almost anything.

- You like to come up with conversation scripts. These are very funny because you memorize a story of something that happened or something you made up and repeat it the same way every time. Sometimes we'll have one of these "conversations" about twenty times in a row. One example of this is when we realized that Atch, one of our cats, was hiding in the fireplace:
- Atch fireplace!
- Dirty!
- Mama said, Silly Atch!
- Atch jumped out!
- Kaia (our other cat) upstairs!

- You also like to have constant conversations with Kaia, our cat, and with your Curious George stuffed animal. Since they don't respond back to you, I have to satisfy you by repeating everything you say to Kaia or George and show you that Kaia's ears are standing up, which means she is listening to you. You tell them things like: Kaia, Jac eat so many pancakes! Kaia, Jac bought Dada new shoes! Kaia, blue shirt and grey pants!
It is soooo cute when you rush into the house, run up to Kaia, crouch down and put your face right in hers, and then tell her what you have been up to.

- You have an incredible memory. Dada and I try very hard to be objective about this, but it’s getting harder and harder to not recognize your unbelievable memory. You only have to be told something once to remember it for the long term, and we can’t get over how well you associate facts and memories with each other. You also love to memorize books. I’ll read a book about fire trucks to you – meant for older kids – once or twice and then when we read it again, you will correctly point out things like air tanks and pike poles and outriggers needing to go down so ladders can go up – facts that I barely remember after a quick read through. You also remember the sentences in a story almost word for word after one or two times reading through the book. It now seems like you are telling us the stories more than we’re telling them to you!

- You love music and dancing and singing. You sing so loud too! You definitely did not inherit Mama’s quiet voice.

Mama loves you so much!

xoxo,
Your Mama

Tagged as: Birthday, Love, Motherhood, Parenthood, Toddler

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