Dear Kate,

About six months ago, I bought this little insulated lunch sack, the kind designed to keep food cool. At the time, I bought it so I would have something to send snacks in when you went to our church's Mom's Morning Out program one day every other week. I'd fill it up with food on that one day, and then it would sit on a shelf in the pantry, empty for the next two weeks.

I bring this up because I realized the other day that in the last month, I have packed a lunch in that sack almost every week day, and that this marks a major transition for us. Suddenly, this month, you have realized that there are things in the world outside of our house, and you want to go and see them. So we go. We go to the zoo and the botanical gardens and the library and the park and sometimes to Target just so you can walk up and down the aisles and greet your public. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" you say to everyone who passes, and you wave like you're on a parade float.

This new phase of activity has been made possible by the disappearance of your morning nap, and I have to say that I'm happy to be on this side of that transition. For what seemed like forever, we were in this weird place where you didn't want to take a nap in the morning, but you still needed one. So some days you'd fall asleep in the morning and then refuse to take your afternoon nap, making you an absolute sleep-deprived mess by 5 p.m. Other days, you'd skip the morning nap and be in a state of delirium by the time your afternoon nap rolled around. Since anything that involves disruption of your sleep patterns is basically the shortest route between your regular fun personality and the crankiest version of you, I really didn't have time to think about what it would be like once you got down to the one nap. I was just trying to survive the getting there. And then suddenly, one day, I realized that you are a one-nap girl, so once you get up for the day around 7 a.m., you're ready to go. All morning. Until 1 p.m.

I have to tell you that when I first processed the fact that there were now seven straight hours of consciousness in your day, I kind of panicked. I mean, what was I going to do with you for that long? For a couple of weeks, I tried to just proceed as normal, keeping you occupied with toys and crayons and Elmo videos while I got dressed for the day and tried to get things done around the house. That did not work at all. You were bored, and it basically turned you into the Seven Hour Roving Force of Destruction. By the time I'd successfully showered, the living room looked like post-hurricane news footage. I'd follow you around all morning trying to clean up messes you had made mostly out of boredom.

I realized after a couple of weeks that I was going to have to get a new strategy and that it was probably going to have to involve getting you out of the house more. But I really didn't want to. I'm kind of a homebody, Kate. Your dad likes to use the word "antisocial," but I think that's overly harsh. What is true is that I could easily stay in my house for a week at a time and not be too bothered. So embracing my new role as Tour Director of Albuquerque has been exhausting. I think it's yet another way that parenting is challenging me to grow as a person in ways I wouldn't necessarily choose for myself. I'll know I've really arrived if I ever find myself on the sidelines of a Little League game. But we're not there yet, so these days, I'm just trying to get really good at packing sack lunches, sunscreen, and everything else we'll need to survive a morning out, sometimes exploring Albuquerque on our own, sometimes seeing friends. Speaking of which, here you are having tea with your friend Heidi.

And having a conversation with Clarence, hopefully a chat about your wedding plans, since his mom and I have agreed that you two will marry one another when you're older. We might let you have a vote about it too, but it is depends on if you are nice to us.

It hasn't taken you long to embrace your new social calendar. In fact, if 10 a.m. rolls around and we haven't left the house, you stand by the door to the garage and chant "Car! Car! Car!" Then you go get your shoes. Then you go get me my shoes. You are nothing if not persistent. This leads me to another area in which you are developing some new skills, for better or for worse. Right now, you remember everything. Seriously, everything. This is good because you are picking up new words every day. You also know how to count to two (hey, you have to start somewhere) and that B comes after A. But your real area of expertise is remembering every time you were ever fed some kind of food that you liked, and where we put it away when we were done. A few weeks ago, we bought some ice cream and you saw us put it away in the freezer. Big mistake. For the next week, every time you walked past the freezer, you would launch into this elaborate routine of signing "ice cream," jumping up and down and generally conveying the idea that you would like some ice cream, right now, pleasepleasepleaseplease. This happened about a dozen times a day until we made a big show of finishing the last of the ice cream and then making you watch us throw the empty container away.

Now on that evidence alone, I wouldn't expect anyone to believe me about your taste-photographic memory. I mean, I pretty much remember everywhere anyone ever gave me ice cream, too, and I try to go back to those places as often as possible in the hope that someone will give me some more. What happened when I started giving you half a Flintstone vitamin is another matter entirely. At your last checkup, your pediatrician and I were discussing you and your general attitude toward food, which can be summed up as "Eh. I could live without it." Except that Kate! You can't live without food! So if I had my way, you would eat a lot more food, but you have other plans, plans that involve eating like an Olympic swimmer for a day or so and then spending two weeks sustaining yourself by nibbling at the corners of crackers and eating half-mouthfuls of banana here and there. Our doctor assures me that you are healthy, but she said that if I wanted, I could give you a vitamin to make sure you're getting all your nutrients. So a couple of weeks later, I picked up some chewable vitamins and started giving them to you at night.

It's so funny to me how the smallest things, done with the best of intentions, can backfire on you in parenting. At first, you weren't really sure how you felt about the vitamins. You would put them in your mouth, take them back out, look at them for a while, and sometimes set one down on the coffee table and walk away, like "Well I'm done with that now." Since that's pretty much your reaction to everything you put in your mouth that isn't ice cream, I just kept giving you the vitamins, and sure enough, you eventually started eating them without complaint. Then you started asking for them at bed time. You call them "yummies" which you pronounce "ummies," and I thought that was so cute. Then you started asking for ummies in the morning, and at lunch, and in the afternoon, and every 20 minutes. Today I think we had the Vitamin Conversation at least 45 times and Kate, if I hear the work ummy one more time, I am going to lock myself in the laundry room and turn the dryer on to muffle the sound of my insane laughter as my mind finally leaves me. I may be the first parent in world history who has to ban Flintstone vitamins from my home like they were sugar-coated and soaked in trans fat. Your doctor is going to ask how the vitamins have been going, and I'm going to have to tell her that we couldn't handle it and had to quit and enter Vitamin Rehab.

Since you're a little Flinstone addict, it's good to be able to report that this month you are much more spontaneously affectionate than you have ever been before. You have always liked to snuggle, but lately, you will come running up to your daddy or me and give us a hug, or a kiss on the cheek when we're reading together at night. When I'm putting you down for a nap, you lay your head on my shoulder and pat me on the back, like I do to you when I'm comforting you after a bump on the head or the tragic news that you can't have ice cream at 9:30 a.m. I think of those bursts of affection from you as rewards for me, and also as an opportunity to remember that life is probably a little challenging for you too right now. I know that I have to tell you no a lot these days. I'm told by other parents that I'll be doing that in different ways at different times in your life for a long time to come. So I think it's important to say that I only tell you no because I love you and want what is best for you. And sometimes because I just can't handle another Elmo video.

I love you,
Mommy

P.S. The theme of this month's pictures is "Look! Kate's hair is long enough to stay in pigtails!" So this last photo is of what her hair looks like when we take the pigtails out at the end of the day.