This month marked another exciting one on the calendar. For starters, we went skiing. Naturally, you do not show a particular fondness for this activity because it requires you to wear gloves, something that you have only recently seen the value in, and it requires you to be outside in the cold - also not among your favorite activities. However, you loved the ski vacation all the same because Grandma, Grandpa, and Dick were there - and because Connor went skiing a few days, you got to have Grandma and Grandpa all to yourself. They took you to the library, to a craft store, and I'm sure they sweetened you up with cookies, too!
You continue to be stubborn as can be and I must remind myself often that you are two, and two is the time when "no" is the only response a parent should expect, regardless of the request. You can even be tripped up by a question such as "Would you like a cookie?". You immediately respond "NO! Yes!". You also ask why all the time and rarely, do you stop talking when you aren't eating. And in fact, you talk a fair amount during dinner as well. If things get a little quiet, you typically break into a little performance which involves lots of signing, a little dancing, and a fair amount of randomness as you mash various songs together.
You adore babies and people in general. If you see a mom without a child on her lap, you'll often walk right up and fill that space, even if it's not my lap.
You enjoy your gymnastics class. At the end of one class, I asked you to show my your somersault that your dad said you could do, and naturally you responded "NO!". But then when Daddy asked if you had shown me, you said "yes!". When I contradicted you, you walked right out in the middle of the floor, as Connor's class was preparing to start, and performed the feat. And that's you, Helen. You're happy to just go do what you need to do, regardless of the circumstances.
You continue to love playing with Connor and often work your way into playing with his friends as well. They don't always give you the best roles to play, but you play them with zest, and that's an important skill, Helen, learning to love what you do.
As remarkable as it is, I almost forgot to mention, you no longer breastfeed. Yes, that's right, just before turning 2.5 you have weaned, and it was the easiest weaning I could have imagined. For a while now, we've only nursed at bedtime, and then I started switching up the bedtime routine a bit, so that we nursed before books, and hey, books are exciting, and you quickly decided you'd rather be reading, so our nursing sessions got shorter and shorter until one day, you told me you didn't want to nurse. Remarkably, my appetite immediately shrunk which is a good thing, because nursing and being pregnant burn a lot of calories, and I've been in one of those two states since Thanksgiving of 2004. That is a lot of years of eating like a professional eater, and goodness knows if my appetite hadn't shrunk, I might be purchasing new clothes in a few months now that I'm not burning calories by nursing. Even if you're not nursing anymore, you'll always be my baby.
You have the most beautiful smile, and you share it often. It's impossible not to smile when you're around.
Love,
Mommy
too cute with her pony tails
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