Dear Kate,

This month, you fell in love with "Annie." I have been waiting for this day to come, and the fact that it has proves that you are my daughter, in case anyone had any doubts. I actually bought you a copy of "Annie" on DVD several months ago on a whim, but you had no interest in it, and so it's been sitting on the shelf, gathering dust. Then last week when we were packing to go to San Antonio, you were making me crazy by trying to "help," which means "take things out of the suitcase as fast as I can put them in." It occurred to me that if I could just get you to sit still somewhere for 20 minutes, it might fix everything, so just to see if it would work, I popped "Annie" into the DVD player, and you sat there in frozen wonder for a half hour, watching the singing and the dancing. When I turned it off to feed you dinner, you looked at me with your big brown eyes and said "Ahhhhnnniee!" And for the next 24 hours it was "Ahhnie!" every ten minutes.

Kate, when I was a kid, I watched "Annie" on VHS tape about 1.5 million times. I knew all the words to every song, and I proved it one time when my parents and my Aunt Merry Lynn took me to see a Hattiesburg Civic Light Opera production of "Annie," where I stood up in the balcony and sang along with the actors. They tell this story like it's cute, and all I can think is that they really should have made me shut up for the sake of the other theater-goers. Still, it was the highlight of my life up til then, and I wore the souvenir T-shirt I got that night until it pretty much fell apart. I think I still have it somewhere.

I used to wonder what in the world would induce my parents to attend a live performance of a musical they had been forced to listen to until they undoubtedly heard "Tomorrow" in their sleep. Now I realize that one of the unexpected joys of parenting is how much fun it is to watch your child have fun. It's why it is actually kind of awesome to do things like take you to Chuck E. Cheese, which I'd have paid good money not to do before you were born. And it's like that with Annie. I wouldn't be heartbroken if you didn't love it, but the fact that you do has let me enjoy it again, too. I think taking you to a live performance is starting to climb pretty rapidly up my list of things I'd really like to do one day, and if you stood up and sang all the songs I'd probably let you get away with it, too. That's how warped my brain is now.

This month, if you had your own Facebook account, as some of my family and friends have suggested you should, the things you would "become a fan of" would include: Annie, of course; ice, something you have become obsessed with eating; the garbage truck, which we are anxiously listening for right this minute so that we can run to window and watch it pick up the garbage cans; and dogs. Yes, dogs. No, we don't have a dog. But your grandparents do, and when we visited them this month, you basically relegated your human relations to second string and followed Maggie and Kemah the dogs around like they were celebrities and you were the paparazzi. You referred to them not by their names, but as "Doggy" and "More Doggy." We'd come back to the house after a brief absence and you'd start saying "Hi, Doggy! Hi, More Doggy!" as soon as we pulled into the garage.

I have to tell you, Kate, you're not doing me any favors here. Your daddy and I have a mixed-faith marriage when it comes to animals. He grew up with well-trained pure-bred Labs who lived in the house and were part of the family. Half of the Wachdorf family stories involve the dogs they've owned over the years. If you didn't know any better, you'd think they have a third daughter named Maggie. I, in sharp contrast, grew up in an outside dog home. We had two dogs and a series of cats over the years, but they all primarily lived outside. The last dog we owned was Avalanche, the world's dumbest but sweetest American Bulldog, who lived a happy life on 40 wooded acres, but was not big on baths and smelled like a garbage dump. Av made a game out of trying to sneak into the house, but was always evicted within minutes, with one notable exception. One time when your Gam and Geez were visiting Dan and I in New Mexico, they left Avalanche in the care of your uncle Ryan, whose entire job in dog-sitting was to feed Av and prevent him from getting into the house. Two days into Mom and Dad's trip, they got a call from Ryan, who, after some nice small talk asked in a casual sort of way "So .... how do you think you would get dog slobber out of a couch cushion?"

So I don't want a dog. I especially don't want a dog to live in my house. So far I have been winning this little standoff in our marriage because the score is Dan:Yes to Haley: Heck No, and I'm the one who will be cleaning up after the dog if we had one, so I get like one and a half votes. But now I'm outnumbered, and I should probably just start enjoying the golden years of my life without dog hair and flea treatments and late night trips to the vet. Your daddy's evil plan is working.

You got a lot taller this month. Little dresses that were kind of long on you at the start of the summer are now up above your knees. Meanwhile, you think you're getting bigger than you actually are. One day recently, you walked up and said "Hi, Haley," to me, like it was no big deal, just something you're trying out. This weekend you like the sound of "Hi, Dan." We're having a hard time not laughing when we inform you that you're going to be calling us Mama and Daddy for the foreseeable future. In just a couple of months you're going to be two, an age that sounds impossibly big to me. I have a two year old. And I like to watch Annie and go to Chuck E Cheese, and I'll probably have a dog one day. How remarkable, what one little person can do.

I love you,
Mama

This last picture of Kate was taken at Chuck E. Cheese, where she surprised me to death by actually dancing with the life-sized rat. I was terrified of that thing when I was a kid, and it's almost creepier now, because instead of a person in a suit, they have this giant robot version that just moves around on its own. I still think I was right to be freaked out.