Oh my dearest, darling Emmie,

You are such a delight each and every day and your good moments only get better and better. This is a good thing, since you are also really starting to assert your toddler attitude.

Here are a few adjectives I would use to describe your personality: sweet, sensitive, funny, affectionate, bossy, attentive, cautious, helpful, and curious.

Where to start? I guess the best thing that has happened this month has been your spontaneous and genuine demonstrations of affection. You LOVE hugging and actually squeeze us now. My favorite thing you do is when you sign “I love you” to me when I put you to sleep. It is so very sweet. I love when you rest your head on our shoulders, and I LOVE the “group hugs” we do with you, me and Daddy.

You really, really, really like things to be clean and to be a certain way. You are incredibly observent and pick up on the patterns of daily life I don’t even notice. You know that Daddy drinks from a tall glass and Mama drinks from a shorter one. You know which seats we usually sit in and direct us to sit there each time. You know what things should be in the trash and put them there (we even had to get you your own little trashcan in the kitchen because our big one has a lid you can’t open). You notice if I have something on my face (which is actually pretty nice and might save me some embarrassment someday), you notice if there is a piece of trash on the ground, and you notice if there is a spot of something and will often get a towel to clean it up. That said, you also dump toys like it’s your job and will often straight up tell me “no” when I ask you to clean it up.

 

You are getting so much braver when we go outside now. You will now walk when we go outside (although you still want me to pick you up the instant we see another person), and you will walk on grass, bark and other surfaces outdoors. You LOVE climbing up steps and sliding down slides on your belly. You really want to be able to climb stairs like a big girl by using your legs, but you just aren’t quite tall enough for most steps yet.

You love to read and we will often read book after book, all in a row. Bafflingly, your very favorite books have been the If You Give A… series of books. Your very favorite is If You Give a Moose a Muffin. I do not know why or how you decided to love these books, since they are 5 times as long as most of the board books we’ve been reading, and have really small and detailed pictures, but there you have it. You love finding the radio in the pictures and dancing when you find it. You love saying “Boo!” when the moose scares himself. You love pointing out things in the pictures I never even noticed (like when you pointed out the pumpkin in the fridge and then signed “pumpkin,” which I can’t even remember teaching you).

You are imitating more and more words, and possibly even using more of them, but they are still really hard to understand. Everything still sounds like “da” and has a max of 2 syllables, so it’s tough to make things like cat (“dat”) and that (“dat”) sound different enough to know what you are talking about without actually seeing the cat. Thank goodness you have signs to help me differentiate things!

You are my sweet, funny, crazy girl and I love you madly.

Love, always and forever,

Your Mama