Addison Sophia: 2 Years

Dear Addie::

You are not two years old. You are not two years old. You are not two years old.

Except you are two years old. How did that happen? It doesn't feel like it's been two years since you came into our lives. You are growing so fast. You are the love of my life. You are one of two of my favorite people. You are amazing. You have completely changed my life. You have turned it upside down and inside out. In the best possible way of course.

I look at your newborn pictures and I have a hard time believing you are the same girl. Heck, it's crazy to look at pictures from a year ago and believe you are the same girl. You have come so far in this last year. And I couldn't be prouder of you.

The twos are already coming in like a lion. I always thought the terrible twos were just a myth, but I definitely don't believe that to be the case anymore. The terrible twos are definitely here and don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. You are stubborn and all about doing things yourself, except you can't do it all yourself and that seems to make you angry. You have also taken to completely ignoring me when I say 'no.' Yes, I just love that. Some days are definitely longer than other days.

But we have been working on that ignoring thing, which you don't love. We are officially done with the physical therapy part of help from Infant Toddler Services. Now we are primarily working with the early elementary and developmental specialist with your language and teaching you to be flexible. I know that sounds silly, "teaching to be flexible," but you take after me, kid, and you have some OCD traits. It's sometimes a battle but some days you give in to taking the animals out of the puzzle in a different order without a meltdown. We have also been working on identifying different animals and items because that's the first step to talking. Some animals confuse you - a hippo and a rhino look a lot alike in our puzzle. At least I think you get confused which animal is which, but there's a pretty good possibility you are just being stubborn and don't want the monkey but you want to snake. I'll admit that I'm pretty sure you know the difference but that stubbornness is just showing its ugly head. Whatever the case, you are getting much better.

You are great at puzzles. You spend huge chunks of time just sitting there taking your puzzles apart and putting them back together. You just recently mastered your alphabet puzzle. It's pretty awesome how fast you are learning things. It's not that you can recite your alphabet, but you are at least putting the letters in correctly. Along with puzzles, you love coloring. You spend a lot of time coloring and sorting through all the colors. You are an artist in the making. My left handed artist in the making.

You are your father's daughter without a doubt. You look a lot like me. There are pictures of me when I was your age and we look pretty much the same. Plenty of people have said, not knowing me as a child, that you look like me. But your personality is your dad's. You are very visual when it comes to learning. You love to figure things out. You are too smart for your own good sometimes. But sometimes you surprise us with those observation skills of yours. You love to watch your dad do wood working. You just sit there and watch. When he was screwing things in the other day, you watched him take screws from a pile and put them in. Then the next thing he knew you were handing him the screws that he needed when he needed them. You love to help. Unfortunately your helping skills don't extend to your dear mama. You tend to think it's better to get under-foot and are often counter-productive to whatever I'm doing. But you wouldn't be you without being helpful one minute and not so helpful the next. I haven't even mentioned you picking things up, carrying them off, and hiding them somewhere so it takes me a month to find them.

You are the joy to my life. You are a pain in the butt. You wear me out. You frustrate me. You give me endless worry. But mostly you are my perfect little girl with a thousand nicknames. You are smart. You are beautiful. Happy birthday, bubs! I love you so much!

Love, Mama