2.5

Dear Alice,

It's your turn for a letter to you marking the day you turned 2 and 1/2. Though mind you, you've been so focused on turning three (ever since January, in fact) that when I tried to make a big deal this morning of your turning 2 and 1/2 you cut me off. Half birthdays aren't worth the fuss, you seemed to be saying. Get back to me with the news when I've hit the big THREE.

Indeed, looking ahead to "when I'm bigger" is a prominent part of your life these days, no doubt more so than it was for Edith, as you are a little sister. You're aware of things to come that Edith never dreamed of: "When I'm five, I will go to kindergarten." Sometimes you alert us that you've gotten bigger recently, and can't X or Y happen now? Today you were making a pitch for some privilege or another by suggesting, as I put you in the car after daycare, "Mommy, I think I've been growing all day. Okay, can we do it?" Fortunately, when we put you off about some desired activity, you can still be assuaged with vague promises for the future. "Maybe we do it tomorrow'later?" you ask, switching tracks all of a sudden. And I'll agree that the desired activity can, or will, happen later. And I'm still surprised when you say, cheerfully, "Okay" and cease wheedling. Your rosy outlook is a pleasure and will be a boon to you in life.

To be sure, there are some definite big-girl shifts happening now. Your daycare teachers report that you're effectively potty-trained at school, though that doesn't seem to be the case at home yet. (At all.) Last week you surprised us by proposing a move from the crib in your room into the bunk bed with Edith for overnights. You've slept there about 2/3 of the past week, and while it hasn't eliminated nighttime wake-ups and crying for mommy and milk, I think it has made them fewer.

Your ever-blossoming relationship with your sister is a delight to us all. Admittedly, you two can spiral into a quickly escalating round of squeals and shouts--primarily because you are jealous of objects, even Edith's possessions, or her half of an evenly shared booty. She is very generous to you with material objects, though she does take a certain delight in needling you in other ways, in the moments when you're susceptible to being needled. But for the most part you laugh together and protect each other. It's a pleasure, as you seem to be ever more each other's most reliable friend. Not for nothing did Edith's Mother's Day card thank me for giving her you.

You are quickly turning into the family joker, imitating people we know (sometimes uncannily), making silly faces, and adopting funny voices just to make everyone laugh. A little sister seeking attention? A light-hearted soul seeking to loosen up three serious, straight-laced types?

You've recently embarked on extended imaginary play, including a few pint-sized imaginary friends whom I must be careful not to sit on but can help carry from one place to another, cupped in my palms. When playing with real humans, you like to serve us meals that you cook. It's sometimes hard to be the attentive, grateful guest at your elaborate banquets while also serving as a princess-explorer in Edith's parallel imaginary world. I look forward to the point when you merge these fantastical scenes and together inhabit a single game.

You seem to your biased mama particularly musical, often singing snippets (or more) of songs you've heard, mostly melodically. You are quick to dance or to sing along to any music in the background. You try making up your own lyrics, too.

Among your current handful of funny pronunciations and words, I particularly appreciate loder (pronounced: loader). It's a combination of louder and lower that works in both contexts: From the backseat of the car, "Please put my window loder down" and from bed, "Please turn the music loder up."

You are ever the people-person, as even others observe, and you frequently point out people in church that we don't know and tell us the children to whom they're related, or ask where particular adult neighbors are, or plan big reunions at our house with your daycare friends. When we dined this week at the neighbors' house, we found you after dinner in the middle of a round of soccer practice, appealing to 7- and 9-year old boys to admire your kicks as easily as if you were playing with your own teddy bears in your room.

Probably as a result of listening in on your sister's bedtime stories since birth, you will point to words and ask me what they say, then try to "read" book titles yourself, pointing to each word in turn. You know most of your letters and the sounds they make, and given your penchant for doing things for yourself (previously unknown in this household), I expect you'll be trying to read to yourself as soon as you can.

You already dress yourself when given the opportunity, and you are proud to be "Daddy's big helper" at the grocery store, finding your favorite items on the shelf and stretching to drop them into the cart. (You're still tiny for your age, not yet wearing size 2 clothing.) You love also to set the table and unload the dishwasher--and you're jockeying to help stir food in the pots and pans on the stove.

We're often astonished by how much you understand of what is going on around you and how appropriately you're able to insert yourself into the conversation. You can read moods on faces, in life or in books, and will trouble to inform us of how people are feeling.

There are any number of funny things you'll say in a day that I need to do a better job remembering. Alas, I fear it's the fate of the younger child not to have her doings recorded as fully as the eldest. But somehow I suspect you'll have no trouble making yourself known and appreciated as you go through life.

It's already impossible to imagine our family without you, our funny, opinionated, observant, youngest member. Alice, we love you--thank you for coming to live with us!

xoxo,
Mommy